


Length of a Shadow

by chiiyo86



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canon - Manga, Captivity, Gen, Kidnapping, Mystery, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 08:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8660503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: As far as kidnappings go, Ciel can't say that this one is so terrible. But Earl Alois Trancy is unpredicable and his motivations are a mystery; soon enough, Ciel realizes he shouldn't underestimate his opponent, and that he might be in more trouble than he assumed. Also, why isn't Sebastian answering his calls? Mangaverse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As indicated in the summary, this fic is set in the mangaverse even though it includes the characters of Alois, Claude & co. These characters are imported from the anime into the manga, and that means I took some liberties with Alois' background story and motivations and that they will be slightly different from Kuroshistuji II. Nothing from the anime-only plot has been kept. And, although I didn't add Sebastian in the character list because he isn't in the fic a lot, he still shows up at some point. :)
> 
> I've written the whole story already and the rest of it is with a beta, so you don't have to worry that the fic won't get finished. I owe my thanks to my friend R, who helped me figure out an important plot point, and to [RandomTiger](http://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomTiger/pseuds/RandomTiger) for the beta work.

_Let me introduce you to my son_. A ruby glint. Blue eyes glancing sideways. The echoes of a raucous laughter that made his skin crawl. 

A crash of thunder rattled the windows, and Ciel woke up with his heart doing somersaults in his chest. A nightmare? His breathing was coming out in short pants, his heart hammering wildly against his ribs and his stomach churning with the faint sick feeling he got from his nightmares—but as he fought to untangle his present reality from the lingering dream, he couldn’t identify any of his usual night terrors. What had it been about? He couldn’t pinpoint the source of his unease.

It mattered not, Ciel told himself, wiping cold sweat off his brow. It had been but a stupid dream, and it held no power over him now that he was awake. He forced himself to take a long deep breath and then to release it slowly, focusing on the control he could exert on the air leaving his lungs. Rain pattered against the glass panes and the wind moaned hollowly outside. How long had it been storming so? Ciel couldn’t remember whether it had already started when he went to bed. Actually, he couldn’t even remember _going_ to bed.

The window lit up suddenly with a bolt of lightning, and all the blood froze in Ciel’s veins. The window was too large, and too far from his bed—no, not _his_ bed. He wasn’t in his room at all. In a split second a number of other oddities struck him at once: he wasn’t in the bed, but merely laying over the covers, and he was still wearing his day clothes. He also couldn’t feel the familiar pressure of his eye-patch against his right eye. He patted his face anyway, only to confirm that it was gone, and then immediately checked for his ring. It was still there, and Ciel sighed loudly, now fully awake and more than a little irritated. Irritated at whoever had taken him—his memory was too muddled to tell who it was yet—and at himself for letting this happen again. Supremely irritated at Sebastian, too—it was his job, after all, to prevent that kind of mishap. 

“Sebastian,” Ciel said out loud, in a low voice but with enough bite to show that he was displeased. “Come and get me.”

For a few long minutes, the only thing Ciel could hear was the sound of the battering rain outside. Thunder rumbled again. Ciel slid off the bed, socked feet hitting a thick rug—it appeared he’d been relieved of his shoes as well as of his eye-patch.

“ _Sebastian!_ ” he called again, more harshly this time. “Come at once!”

Sebastian remained conspicuously absent. Ciel clenched his fists, anger swelling in his chest along with a flutter of panic. 

“Sebastian!” he shouted, foregoing all caution. “Where are you? Sebastian!”

Was that good-for-nothing demon making him wait on purpose? Ciel wouldn’t put it past him, if he judged that Ciel wasn’t really in danger. And maybe he wasn’t, come to think of it. He was unhurt, free to move around. He couldn’t tell much about the room in the darkness, but from the brief flash of light that had been cast on it, it looked like it was wide enough. The bed was large, and the rug under his feet felt like high quality. This was no damp oubliette. He wasn’t locked in a cage. As far as kidnappings went, this was the most comfortable he’d undergone.

Pressing both hands against his temples, Ciel closed his eyes and tried to summon the memories from the previous night. He’d been invited to a party, hadn’t he? He remembered the music, the subpar food, the dull-as-rain conversation that was to be expected in that kind of social gathering. Soma and Agni were there too, and the prince had acted as boisterous as ever. Ciel had been tempted to pretend they didn’t know each other, but it would have been an exercise in futility; Soma’s friendship wasn’t so easily deterred.

What else? Ciel’s eyes had begun to get used to the lack of light, and he could now see well enough to be able to aim for the window. He pressed his forehead against cool glass and tried to peer into the darkness, but it was a moonless, starless night and the rain clouded what little vision he could have had. He remembered…. 

He remembered a blond maid spilling wine over his clothes. He’d been wary of her for some reason he couldn’t recall at the moment, but had trusted that Sebastian would get to him in case of trouble. He’d followed her away from the party and inside a room, and then—nothing. He must have been chloroformed and carried into the present room, unless he hadn’t changed rooms at all. But who was his host? The name as well as the face eluded Ciel. It wasn’t anyone from his usual circle, he was certain of that much. Earl…

Ciel heard footsteps from outside the room and he whirled around, toward where he supposed the door was. A few seconds later he could see light filter from under it, the faint, wavering light of a candelabrum. He started fumbling around for anything he could use as a weapon. They’d taken his gun, of course, and Sebastian’s absence might have indicated that Ciel was in no peril of death, but he knew his butler occasionally enjoyed subjecting him to severe discomfort and he would feel better with something to defend himself. His fingers bumped into an object on a small table that felt cool and solid. More groping told Ciel that it was a water pitcher, and, judging from its weight, that it was full. Ciel took it and waited for the door to open. He could have tried for a surprise attack and hidden by the entrance, but he was too far from it and he didn’t want to risk stumbling over something getting there in the dark.

The line of light under the door was brightening; Ciel gritted his teeth. The footsteps—two pairs of footsteps, he could tell now—stopped in front of his door, and a few excruciating seconds ticked by before it opened. Ciel gripped the pitcher tightly, feeling a little stupid for his makeshift weapon but determined to fight like a devil if need be.

The door slammed open, hitting the wall with a resounding thud. Framed into the doorway stood a boy about Ciel’s age, with tousled blond hair and wide blue eyes, and wearing obscenely short trousers. _Alois Trancy_. The memories came rushing back: Earl Trancy was his host, and the invitation had puzzled Ciel because they had only met once before, back when the former Earl had still been alive. They hadn’t even struck a conversation that night, and Ciel had wondered what the younger Trancy wanted with him. 

“Ciel!” Alois Trancy exclaimed, opening his arms widely. “You’re awake.” He looked down at the pitcher Ciel carried in his hands and his smile turned snide. “Were you thirsty?”

Ciel immediately threw the water pitcher at his face. Alois yelped and covered his head with his arms, but the pitcher never even made contact, because a shadow jumped from behind Alois and interposed itself between the flying object and the boy. The pitcher shattered against it, but the figure—a tall, dark-haired man clad in black—didn’t flinch and just stood there, still holding a candelabrum that cast long shadows inside the room. Ciel recognized him as Claude, the Trancy butler who had welcomed them upon their arrival.

“Claude!” Alois wailed as he hung to the man’s arm like an oversized toddler. “He could have hurt me! Why did he do that?”

“Why am I here?” Ciel demanded. “Where is my butler?”

Alois slipped out from behind Claude and walked up to Ciel. “My poor Ciel,” he cooed, and the familiarity in his tone made Ciel cringe, wishing he had something else at hand to throw. “Don’t you remember? You passed out, and Claude carried you into this room so you could rest.”

“Why didn’t Sebastian take me back home?” He couldn’t imagine his butler letting someone else carry him around when he was unwell. This undoubtedly went against the demon’s aesthetic. “Where is he?”

“Well, you can see how poor the weather is.”

Ciel scoffed. “Sebastian wouldn’t have let poor weather stop him.” 

Alois widened his eyes in an attempt to appear innocent, but Ciel was utterly unconvinced by the performance. The badly acted coyness triggered new memories: the blond maid who had spilled a drink over Ciel’s clothing was _Alois_. Ciel hadn’t identified him right away, because he had only seen the boy once before and Alois had been careful to keep his head bowed, but Ciel had nonetheless noticed something strange about the maid’ demeanour: she served the guests with a carelessness that bordered on rudeness, and moved without the proper subservience a maid should assume. Ciel had followed “her” out of curiosity, and it was only once they were alone that Alois had showed his face.

“Don’t get any closer,” Ciel ordered, seeing that Alois was starting to dangerously infringe on his personal space.

Surprisingly, Alois stopped before he was close enough to touch. Fingers woven behind his back he leaned forward, smiling in a way that indicated that he enjoyed Ciel’s discomfort.

“Tell me why I am here and what happened to Sebastian,” Ciel said, holding back from striking Alois across the face to wipe the smile off of it; no doubt that the man in black, Claude, would retaliate in kind if his master was attacked.

“Ciel Phantomhive,” Alois sing-songed. “I finally got you, and I’m not letting you go. You can call for that butler of yours as much as you want, but he won’t be coming for you this time.” 

\---

Like a whirlwind Alois was gone with as much theatrics he’d arrived with, leaving Ciel without any other explanation as to Sebastian’s whereabouts or what he wanted with Ciel. Claude, his silent butler, had left the candelabrum behind on the nightstand by the bed, so that Ciel had at least a source of light to examine the room he was in: it was a good deal smaller than Ciel’s room in his own home, but by no mean uncomfortable. The four-poster bed was draped with heavy navy blue curtains, the same hue as the ones adorning the single window or as the wallpaper. Left of the bed was an oak commode with a mirror hanging over it, and a washstand, where Ciel had taken the pitcher he’d thrown at Alois from. Across the room, facing the bed, the dead fireplace gaped at him. 

Ciel sat on the bed, trying to compose his thoughts. Alois’ declaration left him in the uncomfortable position of having to worry about his butler. It seemed preposterous to think that that blond lunatic could have found a way to kill the demon, but the fact remained that Sebastian stayed silent to his calls, and Ciel could no longer entertain the idea that it was one of his butler’s tasteless pranks. What had happened to him, then? And, more importantly, what could Ciel do about it in his own precarious situation?

He’d heard the tell tale clicking sound of a lock being turned when Claude had closed the door, but, without anything else to do, he stood up and went to rattle to doorknob, unfortunately in vain. 

“What now?” he murmured to himself, turning to the window.

Clichéd as it was, the window was the only way out he had left. From the sound of it, the storm’s violence seemed to have subsided, so Ciel might as well employ his time fabricating for himself a rope with the beddings until it had calmed down completely. Then he would make his escape, just like the heroine from a novel. 

He got to work, but it soon appeared that the enterprise was harder than books had let on. Tying knots with the heavy fabric from the sheets and cover was an actually very physical task, and Ciel had never had great upper body strength. When he was done with what material the bed had provided him, he gave his sore arms a break and examined his work with a critical eye. Would the knots hold his weight? He wasn’t heavy, but he also hadn’t been able to make very tight knots. But even plummeting to his death in the inscrutable darkness sounded more appealing than playing the passive prisoner for Alois Trancy.

Worried that his makeshift rope wouldn’t be long enough—he wasn’t sure what floor he was on—he added the curtains from the window to it. By the time he was done, he couldn’t hear any more rain or thunder. He went again to peer through the window, but he couldn’t see any better than earlier. Not knowing how high he was made the whole escape even more dangerous, but Alois might come back on a whim at any moment and there was no time to overthink it. He had to get away from here as soon as possible.

He tied one end of his rope to one of the bed’s posters. The piece of furniture looked heavy enough, but it was with a madly beating heart that he went to open the window. Wind ruffled his hair, but it didn’t feel strong enough to be a problem while going down. The rain had not stopped completely, but had been reduced to a fine drizzle.

Ciel took a breath and held it trapped inside his lungs for a moment. It was so dark outside that it felt like he was going to step into an abyss and get swallowed by it. He wasn’t sure whether it helped or not that he couldn’t see anything looking down. He realized that he was stalling, and, clenching his teeth so hard his jaw hurt, he grabbed the rope with slightly trembling hands, and threw a leg over the windowsill. Throwing over the other leg was a small act of will. Actually leaping into nothing made his heart skip a beat but he held on tight to his rope, and, propping his feet against the façade, proceeded to go down.

The descent was an ordeal. Ciel had underestimated the wind’s strength, or maybe it had picked up just to spite him, but it would sometimes plaster him against the wall, or make him swing to and fro like a pendulum—it was all Ciel could do not to lose his grip on the rope, his fingers bloodless from how tightly he clenched them. The persistent rain was slowly soaking his clothes through, leaving him chilled and shivering. It felt like he’d been going down forever when he started to worry that his arms wouldn’t hold him much longer. _Damn Sebastian,_ he thought ferociously to give himself heart. _Damn that demon! He better be dead or in some other impossible predicament, or he’ll get a piece of my mind for abandoning me in that situation!_

His numb fingers recognized the fabric from the window’s curtains, meaning that he was getting close to the end of his rope. The thought quickened his heart: what if he was too far off the ground for a safe jump? He knew he wouldn’t have the strength to climb back up. The sky had cleared up a little and some faint starlight made the night a tad less impenetrable, so Ciel forced himself to look down.

It was hard to judge the distance, but he was fairly certain that he could see the darker outline of a cluster of bushes under him. If anything they should cushion his fall somewhat, or so he hoped. He went down the rest of his rope with trepidations, but when he was almost there the rope gave a sudden jerk, and Ciel felt himself slide down a few more inches out of his own volition. Damn it all! As he’d feared, one of the knots was slipping. If he didn’t jump now, the choice would be made for him anyway. Swallowing hard, he let go of the drenched piece of curtain.

The fall was not as long as he’d dreaded, and soon enough he was fighting to untangle himself from the branches scraping every exposed part of his skin. When he reached the ground his legs buckled under his weight, and he fell on his hands and knees in the mud.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” someone said from above him. 

Ciel froze, then slowly lifted his head to look: a tall, dark silhouette loomed over him, and Ciel caught a glint of starlight being reflected on glasses. It was Claude, Alois Trancy’s butler, and he looked like he’d been standing there for a while. Had he watched Ciel’s progression the whole time, waiting for him to get down? How had he even known what would happen?

Ciel struggled to his feet, and the butler sighed. “You’re being a very rude guest,” he said. “My master will be most disappointed.”

The disapproval in his voice made Ciel bristle. “See if I care,” he replied. It wasn’t his best retort, but then he was utterly exhausted from his fruitless escape attempt.

Claude leaned over him and scooped him in his arms, just as Sebastian did all the time. Ciel yelped with outrage and tried to fight him, but he had been sapped from most of his energy and the butler’s hold on him was like iron.

“Let me down!” he yelled, even as he knew there was little chance the butler would obey.

“Now, now, no need to get so upset,” Claude said, in an airy way that reminded Ciel so much of Sebastian that it shocked him into shutting up.

Claude took him around the house, and when they emerged into the gilded entrance hall that Ciel was familiar with from the previous evening, Alois was there. He stood at the top of the staircase, wearing a nightgown and rubbing his eyes sleepily. 

“What’s going on, Claude?”

“Look at the wet kitten I found in the garden, master.”

“Hey!”

Alois blinked a few times, saw Ciel in his butler’s arms, and burst out laughing. He laughed harder and longer than the joke warranted, folded in two and holding his ribs as though they pained him.

“A wet—kitten. Ha, you’re right, Claude, he does look like one!” Alois straightened up, wiping his eyes and smiling at Ciel. His smile had a cruel edge to it. “Were you lost, kitty-cat?”

Ciel’s face burned from humiliation and anger. How dared they make fun of him? He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him lose his temper, so he did his best to contain it.

“I would very much appreciate it if you let me go home,” he said coldly. “My servants must be out of their minds with worry.”

“Go home? Didn’t you understand what I told you earlier? You’re never going back home!”

“What do you want with me?” Ciel exploded, his tenuous hold on his patience finally snapping. “For what purpose would you hold me here?”

Alois went down the stairs and across the hall, bare feet slapping on the marble floor. He looked up at Ciel in Claude’s arms and reached out to touch his cheek.

“What I want?” Alois said. His sleep-warm hand burned against Ciel’s chilled skin. Ciel jerked away from the touch, bumping his face into Claude’s solid chest. “I have what I want right where I want it.” Alois dropped his hand. “It was silly of you to think that you could get past Claude.”

Ciel shrugged. “It was worth a try. I made it very clear that I am not enjoying your hospitality.”

Alois chuckled. “You don’t get it, do you? Do you really think your Sebastian is so unique?”

“What?”

Seized by a sudden flash of insight, Ciel raised his head to look at Claude just in time to see the man’s eyes turn red and his pupils become reduced to a slit, like those of a cat.

“A demon,” Ciel whispered. Of course. It seemed so obvious now, Ciel could have kicked himself for not seeing it sooner. No wonder he reminded him of Sebastian.

“Tada!” Alois whirled on himself like a dancer. “Didn’t see that coming, did you? You and I are more alike than you think.” 

He stuck out his tongue, and there on the pink flesh Ciel could see that a pattern had been drawn, one not unlike the seal on his right eye. 

“You and I are nothing alike,” he said to Alois, covering for his shock to the best of his abilities.

“Well, we’ll see about that. Claude, take him back to his room. I guess you’ll have to give him new sheets too.”

“Yes, master.”

Ciel was dropped unceremoniously back to the room he’d inhabited before—he didn’t like much that Alois was calling it _his_ room—on a chair while Claude made his bed again. He was shivering from cold and fatigue, his teeth clattering incessantly, but Claude never offered to help him out of his wet clothes. Of course, it hadn’t been part of his master’s orders, whether by design or neglect, and if Claude were anything like Sebastian he would stick to those to the letter.

Once he was alone Ciel proceeded to clumsily get undressed on his own, knowing that falling asleep in wet garments was a sure recipe for falling ill, and that being ill in such a fraught situation was the last thing he should want. He dried himself with the towel that was on the washstand’s rack, and, as he had no dry clothes at his disposal, slipped naked inside the bed. Despite his anger, frustration, and worry, he was so exhausted that sleep took hold of him in no time.


	2. Chapter 2

“Good morning, my lord.”

For an instant, Ciel thought himself back at the mansion, Sebastian rousing him from sleep with his morning tea at the ready. The illusion was quickly dispersed when he became aware that he was naked under the covers, and memories from the night’s tribulations hit him again. He opened his eyes and saw Claude standing by his bed, looking down at him.

Ciel sat up like a shot in the bed, then fumbled with the covers to draw them up to his chin. He almost brought up his hand to cover his right eye before he remembered that it was pointless.

“What are you doing?!”

“I’m bringing you your tea, of course. Is Earl Grey to your taste?”

Without waiting for an answer, Claude turned to the trolley where sat a cup and teapot, and started pouring tea in the cup through a strainer.

“It’s fine,” Ciel mumbled as he tried to gather his wits, scattered by the brutal awakening.

Claude was much more amiable this morning—that was the first thing that caught his notice. He must have been given new orders. It meant that Alois didn’t necessarily want to hurt him, which told Ciel something else: whatever Alois desired from him, he probably planned to release him afterwards. Otherwise he could just torture him and kill him once he’d obtained what he wanted. Unless, of course, what he wanted required that Ciel remained more or less sound of mind and body. In any case, Ciel should take advantage of this apparent good will. One question remained: had Alois targeted Ciel for his job as the head of a successful company, or for his position as Her Majesty’s watchdog? 

“I took the liberty to bring you clothes to your size,” Claude said, pointing to the pile of clothing neatly folded on the chair next to him.

His size? Alois was bigger than him, so the clothes couldn’t be his. They must have been purchased specifically for Ciel, then. He didn’t want to know how the butler had obtained his measurements. 

“Thank you,” he said. Claude seemed to be waiting expectantly, so Ciel added, “I’ll be dressing myself. You’re dismissed.”

The words had been automatic, but they’d barely left his mouth that Ciel realized he’d been talking to Claude as though he were _his_ servant. He stiffened, anticipating a brutal reaction from the demon. Claude merely nodded, though, and left the room with those parting words: “I’ll come and get you for breakfast.”

Once he was gone, Ciel breathed a sigh of relief. He was long used to a demon’s company, so why did Claude set his nerves on edge so? _Because he isn’t yours, you idiot. You have no control over what he’ll do._

It seemed that Alois must have ordered him to abide Ciel’s directions, at least within a certain limit. Ciel threw the covers off him and got out of bed. Or rather, tried to, because as soon as he started to move his body reminded him how much of a toll yesterday’s adventure had taken on him. His arms and legs felt on fire, and Ciel fell back on his bed with a pained cry.

He almost called out “Sebastian!” in despair, but remembered that the demon wasn’t answering him.

He could always call Claude back and ask for his help, but Ciel’s pride wouldn’t let him do it, so he gritted his teeth and tried to get up again. This time he managed to stay on his feet, and he started to put on clothes so slowly that he worried that Claude would come back and announce that lunch was served. Raising his arms was excruciating, and Ciel felt each and every of his shirt’s buttons. The scrapes he’d got from falling into the bushes stung too, and fabric brushing over them as he slipped on his clothes aggravated them. When he got to his tie the pain brought tears to his eyes, and he almost decided not to put it on, but he would be damned if Alois saw him in a less than appropriate attire. 

As soon as he’d finished, Claude came back. Ciel suspected that he’d been standing behind the door the whole time, enjoying Ciel’s sounds of pain. Claude’s eyes lingered on the cup of Earl Grey that Ciel had ignored in favour of getting dressed.

“Wasn’t the tea to your liking, my lord?” he asked pointedly. 

“I didn’t have the time to drink it,” Ciel said. 

“We wouldn’t want you to get thirsty. I can assure you it is excellent tea.”

Under the demon’s cool insistent stare, Ciel swallowed his tea without tasting it. Fortunately, the beverage had had the time to cool and didn’t scorch him on the way down.

“Follow me, Lord Phantomhive,” Claude said when Ciel was done. “Breakfast has been served in the dining room.”

Walking behind Claude through the corridors, Ciel tried to think back to everything he knew about Alois Trancy. Know thy enemy, Aunt Frances would say. According to the rumours, Alois had been kidnapped as a baby by unknown perpetrators. His father had searched for him tirelessly, but to no avail, and out of despair his wife had killed herself. Then about a year ago, the missing son had reappeared most unexpectedly. This was when Ciel had met him for the first time, at a soirée that the elder Trancy had organized to introduce his son to good society. 

_Let me introduce you to my son_. Ciel could remember Trancy pressing a hand to the small of Alois’ back, then letting it slip around his waist. Ciel had taken an instant dislike to the man: something about him didn’t feel right, and that obscene laughter… Ciel still shivered thinking about it. Six months ago, Trancy had died of food poisoning, or so Ciel had heard. Maybe Alois had killed him; Ciel wouldn’t blame him if it were the case. And then, a week ago, Ciel had received the fateful invitation that had brought him here.

A kidnapped son. A family struck by tragedy. A young earl inheriting his title much too soon. A demon butler clad in black… Didn’t that sound eerily familiar? The last part at least felt entirely too coincidental to Ciel: he’d thought his and Sebastian’s arrangement to be rather unique.

“Lord Phantomhive?”

Claude’s voice startled Ciel out of his musings. “Yes?” he snapped.

“We have arrived.”

The dining room, whose walls were covered in rich golden damask, was wide and luminous: candles were hooked on the walls at regular intervals, and a glistening crystal chandelier oversaw the long table. The table was littered with appetizing food: bread and meat pies, golden muffins that looked fresh out of the oven, all sorts of eggs, and scoops of fresh strawberries with whipped cream. Ciel’s stomach rumbled against his will.

“Not too proud for hunger, eh?” 

Alois was already sitting at the table, and he looked at Ciel with undisguised glee. What he was gleeful about was anyone’s guess, and Ciel decided to ignore the comment. Claude had already drawn a chair for him next to Alois, so unfortunately Ciel had no choice but to sit there. 

“Did you sleep well?” Alois asked in a sugar-sweet voice.

“Very well, thank you.”

“Not too sore from last night?”

“I’m perfectly fine.”

Alois must have been hungry too, because he didn’t try to strike a conversation again for the next few minutes as they both started eating. He kept sneaking glances at Ciel, though, which made for a very tense breakfast experience.

“The strawberries are good, aren’t they?” Alois asked at last.

“Excellent,” Ciel said morosely. 

They were indeed delicious, sweet and tasty, and he loved strawberries anyway. He couldn’t help but wonder if Alois had known that fact in advance, or if it was just a coincidence. Just how much did Alois know about him?

“The whipped cream too.” 

Ciel watched in disgust as Alois plunged a finger in the cream and then licked it off, sticking his tongue out in a way that showed off the seal there. Ciel wasn’t sure whether the provocation was meant to be the obscene gesture or the display of the seal. 

“You chose to have it on the tongue, then,” he said casually. “Did it hurt very badly?”

A shadow crossed Alois’ face, but he recovered quickly. He leaned into Ciel’s space as though he wanted to whisper secrets to his ear.

“Did it hurt _you_ , when your demon carved that seal on your eye?” he asked. 

“As if he’d plucked my eyeball right out of its socket,” Ciel said gaily, picking a strawberry from the bowl and biting into it. He let himself enjoy the way Alois’ manic smile slipped at the brutal answer: no triumph was ever too small. “But pain means nothing to the truly desperate. Wouldn’t you agree, Alois?”

Alois sat back in his chair and focused on the food in his plate. Smelling blood, Ciel pushed further.

“Was it your choice or your demon’s to put the seal there? I ask because I’m intrigued: the more visible the spot, the stronger the seal’s power will be. The tongue doesn’t seem the best place for it.”

A bit of pie slipped off Alois’ fork, and Alois swore as he chased after it in his plate.

“Or didn’t you know that?” Ciel enquired sweetly.

“It was decided on a common accord,” Alois replied in a haughty tone of voice.

“I’m sure it was.”

Silence settled back between them, and Ciel pondered his own words. The reveal of Claude’s true nature changed the game. It made Alois all the more dangerous, and not just for the obvious reason: as he’d just said, Ciel knew well how deeply desperate you had to be to form a contract with a demon. Oh, idle aristocrats with too much time on their hands and not enough common sense might play around at summoning them, but actually going through with a contract required something darker. Alois was probably capable of anything to get his wish.

“Let’s lay our cards on the table,” Ciel said, putting down his fork with a _clank_. “You want something from me. I might actually be willing to give it to you, providing it’s not too unreasonable.”

Alois looked at him with wide eyes, maybe taken aback by Ciel’s forwardness. Then he threw his head back and started laughing.

“You—I—” Ciel spluttered, half-bewildered, half-indignant at the reaction. “Maybe this is a joke to _you_ , but I would like very much to go home, so anything I can do to speed up the process—”

“Aaaahh, you’re just so funny.” Alois closed his eyes for a moment, before he opened them again and lazily turned his head in Ciel’s direction. “What I want isn’t something you’ll ever willingly give me, so don’t worry about it. Enjoy your stay in the meantime.” He sat up abruptly and clapped his hands, eyes sparkling. “Wouldn’t you like a bath? After last night’s ordeal, I’m sure it would do you a world of good.”

A bath sounded heavenly, but Ciel felt wary of Alois’ enthusiasm. Since Alois refused to tell him what he wanted, it was hard for Ciel to predict his moves and plan his own. Anything might be a trap lying in wait.

“I think I’m fine, thank you,” he said.

“Come on, I’m sure you’ll feel better afterward!” 

Alois jumped to his feet and grabbed Ciel’s hand. He ordered Claude to get a bath ready, and started pulling Ciel along, out of of the dining room and down a corridor. Ciel dragged his feet as much as he could, but evidently Alois was stronger than him, and, combined with Ciel’s body lingering soreness, it made his efforts to wrestle himself out of Alois’ grip mostly pointless.

At last Alois pushed Ciel inside a room where Claude was waiting for them next to a bathtub full of steaming water. 

“Efficient as ever, Claude!” Alois exclaimed, glancing at Ciel at the same time.

If he hoped that Ciel would be impressed by Claude’s velocity, then he must have forgotten that Ciel had been served by a demon for three years now. It took a lot to impress him. 

“Very well,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I guess I’ll have a bath, then.”

He was waiting for Alois to leave, and was entirely taken by surprise when Alois pulled on one end of his own tie to undo the knot. It was only when Alois started to unbutton his shirt that Ciel understood his intention.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing!” he exclaimed.

Alois didn’t pay him any mind, and kept shedding one item of clothing after the other, dropping them on the floor for Claude to pick up. Eventually Ciel had no choice but to look away, his face aflame.

“I thought _I_ was the one who needed a bath,” he bit out.

“Why waste all that water?” Ciel could see from the corner of his eye that Alois was now stark naked, and stood in the middle of the room completely unashamed. “The bathtub is big enough for both of us.”

“The— _what?_ ”

“Now, get out of these clothes!”

A naked Alois sauntered up to him, and when Ciel tried to step away he bumped into Claude, who was somehow standing right behind him.

“Don’t tell me you’re shy,” Alois mocked, his face split in two by a devilish grin. “You have nothing I haven’t seen before, you know.”

This was revenge, Ciel understood. He must have hit a sore spot during their conversation at the breakfast table, and Alois wouldn’t let that go unpunished. He might be unwilling to hurt Ciel, but humiliation was apparently fair game. 

“Do you need some help, Ciel?” Alois asked snidely. 

His heart pounding and his face hot, Ciel considered his options. They were very limited: either he tried to resist and Alois would have Claude get him out of his clothes by force, or he stripped under his own power and managed to keep a measure of dignity. The situation reminded him keenly of his time at the circus, when Doll had taken him to the baths. The difference was that there had been no malice to her actions, only thick-headed cluelessness, whereas here the whole point was to put him back in his place. Also, he didn’t have the option to run away this time. He would never be able to get past Claude.

“So, what’s it going to be?”

With trembling fingers Ciel started to go through the process of undressing himself. He moved as if he were in a dream, or rather a nightmare. It wasn’t just that he was loathed to stand naked in front of other people—servants didn’t count—or that he feared Alois’ less than pure intentions. No, the crux of his reluctance was branded into the skin of his back. It wasn’t a new fear, and he’d always been able to apply logic to it: he didn’t want to invite people’s inquiries; he hated to worry Elizabeth about things that belonged to the past; he didn’t need anyone’s pity, or concern, or disgust. But as he stood there fumbling with his shirt buttons under Alois’ inquisitive stare, his overwhelming feeling was pure animal fear, a fight or flight instinct that his rational mind had to quell.

By the time he was naked his breathing and heartbeat were too fast, his ears ringing, and he worried that he was entering one of those panicked fits he’d suffered a few times in the past. _This isn’t the time to be weak_ , he chided himself. _You can endure it. You have no other choice._ He pinched viciously at the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger, and the shot of pain helped clear his mind a little. 

“See? Wasn’t so hard, was it.”

Alois planted himself nose-to-nose with Ciel, and pushed away the strands of hair that fell into his right eye. Ciel held very still, feeling horribly exposed, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from screaming.

“So pretty,” Alois breathed, looking into Ciel’s sealed eye. “Such a lovely colour.” He looked Ciel up and down, and ran his hands along Ciel’s arms. “Smooth, pale skin. You’re flawless. Well, almost flawless. I understand what they saw in you.”

“What are you on about? Don’t touch me!”

Alois wasn’t listening to him, and his hands slid down Ciel’s back until his fingers brushed the edge of the brand on Ciel’s back. That mere touch sent a jolt through Ciel’s system and he reacted on instinct, without a thought to the consequences. He kicked Alois hard in the shin and hurriedly pushed away from him, mad with senseless panic.

“Ow!” Alois rubbed his shin with a pained grimace, then looked up at Ciel with a baffled expression, as if he couldn’t believe the violence of his reaction. “Claude!” he cried out in a shrill voice. “He hit me!”

“I know, master.”

“So aren’t you going to punish him?”

“Yes, your highness.”

Claude’s slap made Ciel’s ears ring and he tasted blood in his mouth. Pressing a hand against his smarting cheek, he glared at the demon, seething with anger. If humiliation was fair game, then it looked like minor damage was too. Ciel could take it, but it didn’t make it any easier to swallow the blow to his pride. Although at least the pain had the benefit of bringing him back entirely to himself. He felt a fair amount of shame at his loss of control, but knew deep down that he would do the exact same thing if Alois tried again to touch the brand.

“Let’s enjoy that bath,” Alois said, cheerfulness restored now that Ciel’s punishment had been dealt. 

He stepped into the water and sat down in the tub. Ciel hated the very thought of sharing it with him, but Claude still loomed at his side and his cheek stung badly. He entered the bath in his turn, and, despite the less than ideal situation, he had to close his eyes in bliss when his sore body was surrounded with hot water. If he was forced into this, he might as well enjoy it.

He wouldn’t let Claude wash him, and to his relief Alois didn’t push the issue and was content to have Claude focus on him. The bathtub was indeed big enough for two, providing that they weren’t two adults. By folding his legs to his chest Ciel managed to avoid touching Alois, and at first Alois didn’t try anything. Ciel was under no illusion that it would last, though, and sure enough, when Claude stepped away from the tub to get a towel, Alois shuffled closer to Ciel, making the water ripple. 

“You’re a bit of prude, aren’t you?” he whispered teasingly. “You look so uncomfortable. We’re merely sharing a bath. Where does your mind go?”

“If you get any closer, I’ll—”

Alois reached out and cupped Ciel’s knee, letting the tips of his fingers travel down the inside of his thigh. “You’ll do what?”

Ciel lowered his voice to a menacing murmur. “I will kick you in the genitals. I’m sure you know how bad the pain will be. Do you think me incapable of it?”

Alois was still smiling, but Ciel could see a hint of tension at the corner of his mouth. “Claude will hit you again.”

“Oh, I am well aware of the risks.” He slid a foot in the space between Alois’ legs. “But right now, what do you think I want more: to avoid pain, or to make you hurt?”

He was betting on the fact that Alois wouldn’t let Claude hurt him too badly, which was a bit of a gamble. Ciel didn’t let his expression waver, and after a few long seconds Alois leaned back against his end of the tub. 

“So pretty and yet so ruthless,” he said laughingly, but Ciel could have sworn he heard a hint of admiration in his voice. He would have preferred fear, but then Alois held all the cards for the moment—what did he have to fear from Ciel?

When Ciel got out of the bath his head spun, and he had to grip the edge of the tub to steady himself. Claude, who had been drying Alois with a large towel, was at his side in an instant with another one.

“Careful, my lord,” he murmured, wrapping Ciel into the soft folds of the towel.

“It’s just the heat,” Ciel said, then kicked himself mentally for sounding as if he were trying to justify himself.

He snatched the towel from Claude’s grasp and started drying himself, an endeavour that, with no one to help him, was more time consuming than he was used to. By the time he was finished, Alois was already back into his clothes and watching Ciel’s attempt at independence with an amused smile.

“You’re very stubborn,” he commented.

“I’m glad you noticed,” Ciel said. “Now, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Oh, no. It is much more fun this way.”

 _I’m glad_ someone _is having fun_ , Ciel thought peevishly. He was now getting dressed as quickly as he could without tripping himself in the tangle of his clothes, and Alois and Claude watching him as he did it would have been more humiliating if he hadn’t already gone through the excruciating undressing process.

He was brought back to his room after that, locked inside it, and left there to brood the whole day, save for a visit by Claude at lunchtime when the demon butler brought him his meal on a trolley. It gave him more than enough time to think, and he tried to consider his predicament in an analytic fashion. The situation was pretty dire whatever the angle he considered it under: for the first time he wasn’t the one with a demon, and he didn’t like this turn-around one bit. As long as Claude was there, he would be able to thwart any escape Ciel attempted. 

And, as much as Ciel hated to think it, if Claude was a demon then there was a possibility that he’d killed Sebastian—better work under the assumption that there would be no rescue coming from that end. After all, Ciel had no idea how strong Sebastian was in comparison to his peers. He didn’t know anything about demons other than what he’d gathered from watching Sebastian, and even then he couldn’t tell whether his butler was representative of the demonic species. Sebastian had never shared any details about his past life or about his kind, and, to be perfectly honest, Ciel had never cared enough to ask. He was sorely regretting this lack of curiosity, now. 

Anyway, the weak link was Alois, and Ciel needed to figure the chink in his armour. It would be a battle of wills. Ciel was used to those, but there seemed to be something very wrong with Alois, and it was hard to fight against madness. Ciel sighed, falling back on his bed with his arms spread. He eyed morosely the inside of the canopy over the bed, thinking how hard it was going to be to do anything if they kept him inside that room.

_Here I am again. Locked, humiliated, stripped from my agency._

Without any kind of distraction at hand, it was difficult to stop that train of thoughts. Sure, his quarters were much more comfortable than last time, but at the core it was the same sort of situation: he was but a thing in the hands of someone who wanted to play with him without giving him access to the rules. The thought made its way into his mind and descended into his lungs and heart, making them strain with the effects of incipient panic.

He ordered himself to stop it at once, and jerked into a sitting position. He stood up and started to pace the room, reciting bits of Poe’s poetry to himself in order to keep his treacherous mind in check. 

_‘I stand amid the roar/ Of a surf-tormented shore,/ And I hold within my hand/ Grains of the golden sand—’ He bears his seal on his tongue. It lessens the seal’s power, Sebastian said: what does it mean exactly? Does he have less control over the demon?_

Walking back and forth between the bed and the window, Ciel let his feverish thoughts run wild. If there was a weakness in the bond between Alois and Claude, then it was something he needed to exploit. He also needed to figure out what had happened to Alois before he reunited with Trancy—if he was even Trancy’s son at all, which Ciel had his doubts about.

Making plans had calmed him down, but as long as he wasn’t let out of the room he had no way to put those plans in application. After lunch, he ended up sleeping away a good part of the afternoon. Captivity was terribly dull, and he hoped he would soon be given something to do before he bashed his brains against the wall.


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning had his wish come true, and over the following days he was left to roam free around the mansion. Well, almost free, for Ciel very soon started to test the limits of that freedom. The mansion was vast, bigger than his own, and Ciel immediately purposed to know his prison better. It was an old and imposing building, a superb example of Elizabethan architecture, adorned with many windows that gave it a light and airy appearance. Ciel counted over 150 rooms, all perfectly taken care of even though there was no other resident than Alois—and now, Ciel himself.

He never had the impression that he was watched, but whenever he approached certain parts of the western wing, Claude would suddenly materialize and usher him away. He was never very obvious about it: sometimes he said Alois wanted to see Ciel, or that it was time for tea, or that it was getting too late to wander around. Ciel wasn’t a fool, though, and he could tell when someone was trying to pull the wool over his eyes. Evidently they didn’t want him to access parts of the house, which of course made him want to go there even more.

Sometimes it wasn’t Claude who stopped him, but another of the servants. The other servants were a puzzle for Ciel, because he couldn’t figure whether they were demons too or not. There were four of them: a white-haired maid, Hannah, who bore an air of perpetual sadness and wore a bandage over one of her eyes—“your kindred spirit!” Alois had laughed—and three identical young men whom Ciel never heard utter a word. Claude seemed to be able to communicate with them well enough, whereas Alois simply ignored them most of the time. 

When it came to Hannah, though, Alois was thoroughly nasty. He hit her at the slightest trifle, gave her contradictory orders and then sneered at her for not getting them right, spilled drinks on himself and then pretended it was her fault. It was such a contrast to his simpering attitude with Claude that Ciel couldn’t help but wonder what it was about. Maybe her sad air and her lack of resistance was the cause rather than the consequence of Alois’ behaviour; Ciel knew he at least was sometimes annoyed by it, as he found self-pity abhorrent. Not that harassing a servant just because you could was any better.

“Do you need that badly to prove that you have power over her?” he asked one day, after Alois had smashed a series of glasses to the floor and made Hannah pick up the pieces each time.

Eyes blazing, Alois had slapped him on the cheek that was still bruised from Claude’s blow a few days before. Alois’ slaps had nothing on Claude’s, though, and Ciel barely flinched.

“Did it make you feel better?” He allowed himself the hint of a smirk. “Do you think you have power over _me_?”

Alois had then turned his anger on Hannah, who just took it as if it were her due. 

Alois’ behaviour toward him was changing and unpredictable. Sometimes he would feel the need to reassert to Ciel just how little leeway he was allowed as a captive, and seemed to rather enjoy humiliating him, but on the other hand he also seemed to genuinely be trying to make Ciel’s stay comfortable. As Ciel took to pushing him more and more, he thought that his living conditions would worsen in kind, but baring the occasional slap nothing changed for him. He was never moved to another, less comfortable room, or a cell, still took all of his meals with Alois, eating the same food, was served his tea in the morning, and Claude kept treating him with deference—which he wouldn’t have without orders from his master. Sometimes Alois showered him with manic friendliness. Ciel hated it almost more than the jabs and repeated humiliation, but it gave him the feeling that Alois was trying—perish the thought—to be his _friend_. Ciel wasn’t an expert in making friends, but he could have told Alois that this was no way to go about it.

That uncomfortable feeling only increased when Alois started to have them do things together. They played cricket and other outdoor sports, practiced fencing, and even went out hunting. They never saw anyone else, and no matter how much Ciel looked for a way to escape, Claude was always there, watching him like a hawk.

“If you know so much about me,” Ciel said to Alois as they were having tea in the parlour, “then you must be aware that I’m not very fond of sports.”

“But didn’t you win a cricket tournament in Weston last month?” Alois said with the smile that always made Ciel’s blood run cold.

“How do you know all this?” Ciel asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“How? Well, I know everything about you.” 

Alois fiddled with the ruby ring on his left hand, and a glint from the sun catching the stone drew Ciel’s attention to it: he’d seen that ring on Trancy’s finger before and no doubt it was an heirloom of the type Ciel himself wore on his thumb, but it struck Ciel as familiar for some other reason he couldn’t fathom. The more he watched it, the more uncomfortable he grew.

“Everything?” he repeated, his throat suddenly tight. 

He instinctively jerked away when Alois moved closer to him, leaning over the arm of his chair to do so.

“Everything and _more_ ,” Alois whispered to Ciel’s ear, his breath hot and moist against the side of Ciel’s face, and his hand lingering on the inside of Ciel’s arm. He was always doing this—touching, caressing, clinging—and it gave Ciel murder fantasies. Maybe reading his mind Alois smiled and inched even closer, facing Ciel, to the point where Ciel would have been able to count his eyelashes if he’d been so inclined. And then, suddenly, Alois grabbed the back of Ciel’s head and planted a kiss on his mouth.

“Get off me!” Ciel yelled, giving Alois a shove that almost knocked him off his chair.

The kiss had been so quick that it had left nothing more than an impression of warmth, but Ciel wiped his mouth with his sleeve anyway, overcome by disgust so strong it turned his stomach.

Alois let out a peal of laughter. “You’re so easy,” he said lightly.

“And you’re a freak.”

“Coming from you, I’ll take it as a compliment,” Alois said, smiling over the rim of his teacup before he took a sip.

“Take it any way you want,” Ciel replied shortly.

He drank from his own cup to calm his nerves. The tea was a pleasant blend of Darjeeling, Ceylon, Lapsang Souchong, and jasmine, and Ciel breathed in the aroma before drinking, giving both his sense of smell and sense of taste something to enjoy. He shouldn’t let Alois get to him, but it was becoming harder not to. He’d been here four days and hadn’t made any headway, which was trying his patience. He also wasn’t sleeping well, probably because of the stress, and woke up still tired and all the crankier for it.

“Since you know so much about me,” he said, trying to veer the conversation on topics that could further his agenda, “it seems unfair that I know so little about you.”

“Oh? Do you have questions, Ciel?” Alois opened his arms wide. “Ask away; I’m an open book!”

“Where have you been all this time? I mean, before your fortunate reunion with your father.”

“Straight to the painful matters, eh?”

Ciel put his cup back on its saucer with a delicate noise of clinking porcelain. “I’m not one for small talk,” he said. “I know what your life has been like since your father found you. It’s everything else that is a mystery.”

“Well, if you really must know, I was in a village, where I was worked like a slave.” Alois looked down with half-lid eyes, and Ciel thought he saw the glint of a tear pearling on his eyelashes. “It was a miserable life, so you’ll understand that it pains me to talk about it.”

Ciel snorted. If Alois hoped to tug at his heartstrings, then he didn’t understand him very well. “I see. A village. And where was this village, pray tell?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t allowed to leave it, and no one even told me its name.”

Ciel frowned. He was doubtful of the story’s veracity, but then he hadn’t known how to direct Sebastian to his home either, back when he was ten years old and had just been freed from captivity. Maybe it wasn’t completely unbelievable that Alois might have been the same.

“How did your father find you?”

“You’d have to ask him, because he never told me. But, oh, wait, this is quite impossible now, isn’t it?”

“How convenient for you,” Ciel said, taking another sip of his tea.

Alois jutted out his lower lip in a parody of a pout. “You don’t seem to believe me.”

“Your story is full of holes: who kidnapped you? What did these people even want with you? A slave? There are enough orphan children in the streets to fill that need—why would they take the risk to steal a child of noble birth?”

“I don’t know, Ciel, what did _your_ kidnappers want with you? Do you know what that was about?”

Ciel’s hold on the tiny handle of his teacup tightened. It showed much restraint on Alois’ part, really, that it was the first time he’d brought up this particular event.

“You didn’t think I wouldn’t know about that, did you?” Alois asked when Ciel’s silence lasted a moment too long.

“This is public knowledge. Why wouldn’t you know?”

“And you don’t like talking about it, do you?”

Ciel glared at him. “Of course I don’t. If you’re trying to shame me for my questions, I’d like you to remember which of us has kidnapped the other.”

Alois’ eyes narrowed for a second, as if peeved by the reminder, but then he smiled and pressed a hand over his heart. “Touché. But you’ll see, in time you’ll come to think of this mansion as your home too.”

“I very much doubt that.”

Ciel spent the rest of the afternoon trying to avoid Alois. If it was a logical move for Alois to try to use Ciel’s kidnapping against him, it didn’t mean Ciel had to like it. He’d found over the last few days that the library was a sure place to be free of Alois, so he took refuge there for most of the day.

The library was quite well provided for, and promised Ciel many happy hours. It was a large room filled with rows of bookcases, and more of them could be found on a mezzanine supported by round marble columns. A collection of swords, guns, and shields hung on the walls, and suits of armour stood in the corners like silent guardians of knowledge. Ciel perused the books and found a large array of topics, from history to poetry, as well as books on technology, science and arts, and collections of political pamphlets. There were very few of the modern novels that Ciel himself enjoyed, but his curiosity was piqued by a few volumes on demons.

“An interest in the occult, eh?” Ciel murmured to himself as he leafed through a copy of Collin de Plancy’s _Dictionnaire Infernal._

Well, that explained where Alois might have found the idea to summon a demon—from his father himself. Quite ironic, if Alois had used his demon to eliminate Trancy.

Ciel killed the next few hours curled in an armchair, going through Trancy’s selection on the occult. A lot of it seemed fantastical to him; the illustrations, for instance, were simply grotesque. He’d seen a demon’s true form with his own eyes, and it certainly didn’t look like a patchwork of farm animals. Other things, though, rang uncomfortably true.

“ _Il reçoit une marque au moyen de laquelle il jouit d’une puissance absolue sur trois esprits infernaux_ ,” he read softly. A mark to wield power over an infernal spirit; now that was something that sounded eerily familiar. 

Ciel snapped the book shut, which sent a cloud of dust to his face. He coughed, then rubbed his aching eyes with his thumb and forefinger. It had been weird at first, to not be wearing his eye-patch, but he’d gotten used to having his eye free again alarmingly fast. 

So Trancy had been into demon summoning. Was it how he’d found his son again, on the odd chance that Alois really was the lost Trancy heir? Maybe Trancy had bound himself to a demon to find his missing child, and had died when the demon had come to collect his soul. But then it was unlikely that the demon would have waited six months to eat Trancy’s soul, so probably not. The thought that Trancy might have tried to summon a demon too stayed with him, though. 

That night sleep eluded Ciel, who tossed and turned restlessly in his bed. He hated it when he was exhausted, but his mind and body were too rebellious to let him get the rest he needed. At last he sat in bed, sighing in exasperation. Maybe a glass of water would do him good. At home he would have just summoned Sebastian, but he didn’t want to see Claude if he could avoid it. He’d found the kitchen during his exploration, and he was confident that he could find his way in the dark. Decision made, he jumped out of bed and slipped into the shadowed corridor.

He wasn’t afraid of the dark by any means—he wouldn’t last long in his job if he were—but he had to admit that there was something disquieting about a big building at night. Every step he took echoed disproportionately, and the house cracked and creaked and moaned in ways that made Ciel feel like it was coming to life. The shadows were many hiding places for the soundless servants that roamed around the mansion, and Ciel was on his guards the whole way to the kitchen. What he was afraid of exactly, he couldn’t say—it wasn’t as though he’d been forbidden to leave his room at night—but he couldn’t completely quiet his heart.

Drawing closer to the kitchen, he could see some light filtering from under the door. Who could be in there at that late hour? _Please don’t let it be Claude_ , was the shameful thought that flashed through his mind. Well, he’d made it this far, hadn’t he? So he wouldn’t go back to his room, tail between his legs, without a bloody glass of water.

When he opened the door he saw Hannah sitting at the kitchen table, polishing silverware. A neat row of knives was lined up in front of her like soldiers in battle formation. She didn’t startle at his entrance but looked up unhurriedly, as if she’d already known he was there. Her sad blue eye fixed him for an instant before she asked quietly, “Did you need anything, Lord Phantomhive?”

“Yes,” Ciel said, doing his best to mask the relief he felt at finding her here rather than Claude. “I would like a glass of water, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

“None at all.”

She stood up to pour him a glass from a pitcher, and he sat at the table across from where she’d been working.

“Here it is.”

“Thank you.”

She went back to her work and he watched her thoughtfully, drinking the cool water slowly so he would have an excuse to stay. He had a hard time believing that she could be a demon, if only because of the way she let Alois treat her. But right now she seemed to have been aware of his presence, and he knew himself to be pretty light on his feet. Anyone normal would have manifested at least a little surprise at an unexpected intrusion in the middle of the night.

“Have you been working for Lord Trancy long?” he asked. “Did you know the previous Earl?”

“I didn’t, my lord. I’ve started at the mansion when my master came into his current position.”

“Same time as Claude, then? And the triplets?”

“Yes, my lord. We all started together.”

“What became of the late earl’s servants?”

She raised her head to look at him and said, “I wouldn’t know, my lord.”

She looked down to her work again. Ciel drank more water. His head ached, which happened sometimes when he missed on too much sleep. He massaged his temple, trying to think. It was certainly odd that all the servants would have come into service at the same time. Alois must have gotten rid of his father’s staff, one way or another. 

He watched Hannah work for a moment, the soothing back and forth of the cloth on the silver blades almost hypnotizing. If he asked her the question on his mind point blank, would she tell him the truth? He wasn’t quite sure if Sebastian’s not lying was due to his nature or Ciel’s own request when they’d formed their contract. 

“Are you a demon?” he finally asked, figuring that there was no big risk in asking—Claude didn’t exactly hide what he was.

Her gestures never wavered, and her face remained perfectly blank. “Yes,” she said.

“And the triplets?”

“They are as well.” She paused in her polishing and glanced up at him. “Was it all you wanted to know?”

Now for the truly sensitive question. “As a matter of fact, it wasn’t.”

“Then ask away.”

Ciel put down his empty glass on the table. “Are you contracted to Alois?”

“No, we’re not,” she answered just as easily as before. “We are following Claude.”

“Really?”

 _Fascinating_. Ciel leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, his headache all but forgotten. He’d thought that the ‘master’ she’d mentioned was Alois, but it might actually be Claude, then. He hadn’t known that it was possible for demons to be subservient to others of their kind. It must mean that Hannah and the triplets were of a lesser status and power—it would certainly account for the triplets’ communication issues. Would they get pieces of Alois’ soul, or were they expecting another form of reward for their service?

“Why do you—” he started asking, but was cut short when a heavy hand dropped on his shoulder.

He yelped in alarm, but it was only Claude—of course it was, damn him—and the demon asked him with perfect equanimity, “Were you in need of something, my lord?”

The weight of the demon’s hand making his heart beat faster, Ciel replied hotly, “I wanted a glass of water, that’s all.”

“You could have just rung me.”

“I wasn’t aware I was being consigned to my room.”

“You will catch a cold, wandering the mansion in your night clothes. Let’s take you back to bed.”

Without waiting for Ciel’s assent he pulled him by the collar of his nightshirt. Clinging to the edge of the table, Ciel protested loudly, “Get your hands off me!”

His struggles were useless, of course, for Claude was incomparably stronger than he was. Nevertheless Ciel kept resisting the pull and yelling his indignation, and, using his temper tantrum as misdirection, he slipped one of Hannah’s polished silver knives up his sleeve.

“Lord Phantomhive, you’re behaving like a spoilt child,” Claude said with a hint of exasperation.

It was the only warning Ciel got before he was tucked under the demon’s arm like a potato sack. He kicked his feet in fury and hit Claude’s arm with his fists.

“Let me down, you blasted demon! Oi!”

Claude paid him no mind, and brought him back to his room as though he were no more trouble than a piece of luggage. Ciel’s rage wasn’t entirely feigned when the butler dropped him on his bed.

“Never do that again,” Ciel commanded, addressing Claude with his best glare.

“You seem to be confusing me with another demon,” Claude replied coolly. “I do not follow _your_ orders. Good night, my lord.”

On those words he left, and Ciel waited a few more minutes before he got out the knife he’d stolen. It wasn’t much of a weapon right now—the tip was round and the edge too blunt to cause any real damage—but with some patient sharpening, maybe Ciel would be able to make something dangerous of it.

Once he’d slipped the knife under his mattress, Ciel was able to go back to sleep without much hassle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Collin de Plancy’s _Dictionnaire Infernal_ is an actual 19th century book on demonology, and the quote is an actual quote from it. It doesn't seem to have an English translation, but fortunately Ciel canonically speaks French. :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone following this, my apologies for the wait. And happy new year!

Three days later, Alois was in a foul mood. From what Ciel could gather, “Uncle” Arnold was going to pay his dear nephew a visit.

“All he wants is my money,” Alois raged at breakfast, stabbing his poached egg with murderous intent. “And he’s coming with a priest in tow—worried about the state of my soul, is he?”

“That’s awfully optimistic of him,” Ciel commented before he delicately brought a small piece of sausage to his mouth. He didn’t have much of an appetite today, and eating felt like a chore. Fortunately, Alois’ tantrum brought a lot of entertainment to the table. “He’s betting on the fact that you do have a soul.” 

Alois turned to glare daggers at him. “ _You_. You’ll keep to your room during that charade, of course.”

“What a shame. I’ll miss out on the fun.”

Alois opened his mouth as though to formulate a retort, but then his eyes widened and he jumped off his seat. “Claude!” he cried out. “What am I going to do? I threw away all of the old loon’s decorations: the ugly curtains, the nasty rugs, the old knick-knacks!”

 _The ‘old loon’? Talking about dear old dad, are we?_ So much for playing the loving, dutiful son. 

“Leave it to me, master,” Claude said. “I’ll arrange everything.”

“Really?” Alois said, painfully hopeful. Ciel would have hated to sound that vulnerable. Didn’t Alois get that even if the demon fulfilled his every request, he wasn’t ultimately on his side?

“Yes, your highness,” Claude said, bowing slightly.

“Thank you, Claude!”

“You shouldn’t leave yourself open like that,” Ciel said once Claude had left the room.

Alois’ eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“The way you talk to Claude, it’s indecent. He isn’t your friend, or your father, or whatever fancy you made up in your mind. All he wants is to eat your soul.”

“Oh, but your precious Sebastian is an exception, is that it?”

Ciel scoffed, and dabbed his lips with his napkin. He had barely made a dent in his plate, but already he wasn’t hungry anymore. Something in Alois’ words had caught his attention: he’d used the present when talking about Sebastian—meaning that, as far as Alois was aware, Sebastian was still alive.

“Of course he isn’t,” Ciel said. “The difference between you and me is that I am well aware of what Sebastian is in for. He does not love me; I believe he is downright incapable of such a sentiment, but all that matters is that he helps me reach my goal. And why does Claude call you ‘your highness’? This is a prince’s address. Why do you let him flatter you so outrageously?”

“Shut up!” Alois threw the content of his plate to Ciel’s face, then smashed the plate itself to the floor. “Hannah!” he shrieked furiously. “Come and clean up this mess! Why are you so damn slow?”

Ciel blinked and wiped egg yolk off his face. Alois was trembling with anger and some other unidentifiable emotion, and for a moment Ciel thought he was going to hit him with one of his closed fists. Instead, Alois kicked down his chair and it fell on Hannah, who’d shuffled into the room and was busying herself picking up the porcelain shards from Alois’ plate.

“Why are you always in the way? Don’t be so bloody useless, and get out of here!”

Hannah left with the pieces of broken plate, a silent, suffering shadow. Ciel had many cutting comments in mind, but thought it wiser to keep them to himself. Alois wasn’t in a mood to be trifled with. 

“Go to your room,” Alois ordered Ciel.

Ciel’s eyes narrowed. “Beg your pardon? Did you confuse me with your maid?”

Alois whirled around to him, his eyes dark with murder, and gave him a backhanded slap. “Go to your room, or I’ll have Claude throw you in there like a sack of bricks.”

Ciel clenched his jaw, biting down on a reply. His cheek throbbed from the slap, the pain sharp enough that he thought that Alois might have broken skin with his ring. It certainly didn’t sit well with him to be sent to his room like a disobedient child, but he wasn’t in a position to contest Alois’ orders. He had no choice but to obey, and left the room without another word. 

In a flash of foresight he had borrowed a few books from the library, so he wasn’t left with nothing to do from the inside of his prison. At one point someone—most likely Claude—came to lock his room, so if he had any hopes of taking advantage of Alois’ distraction and explore the forbidden parts of the mansion, they were quickly dashed. He went to look through the window, but his room wasn’t on the front of the mansion, probably on purpose, and Ciel couldn’t watch for the visitors’ arrival.

He started to read to alleviate his boredom, but his mind kept drifting to the visit of Alois’ uncle. Was “Uncle” Arnold as doubtful of Alois’ claims as Ciel was? Large sums of money were involved, and that tended to make people cautious. Whatever the reason, it was a good thing for Ciel that other people were getting their noses into Alois’ business. Had anyone from his own household come here to look for him, by the way? Surely his servants were up in arms trying to find him, and this was the last place where he’d been seen. Was the Queen worried at all about his whereabouts? Ciel grimaced to himself: it was better not to count too much on Her royal concern. He was only her dog, after all; dogs could be put down and replaced. 

He ended up falling asleep on his bed, his book open over his chest, and woke up with a jolt to a room streaked with the long shadows of late afternoon. When he tried to get up his head swam and he had to catch himself on the corner of the nightstand to avoid crashing down. He rubbed his face tiredly, wondering whether the visitors had left already.

As if to answer his query he heard the door be unlocked, and he rushed to it. When he opened it and peeked outside, he found the corridor deserted. He exited the room, no goal in mind except the pleasure of being relatively free to move about once again. He walked aimlessly for a moment, trying to clear his mind. He still felt a bit lightheaded, and a pounding headache was building behind his forehead. They were getting a daily occurrence, and although stress and lack of sleep were enough to explain them, Ciel fervently hoped that he wasn’t coming down with something. He didn’t relish the idea of becoming more vulnerable than he already was, and his greatest fear was that his ailing health would trigger an asthma attack. Having Alois and Claude hover over him when he couldn’t breathe properly sounded like the worst sort of nightmare.

As he kept walking he was lured by the sounds of things being thrashed to the floor. Then he heard a cry of anger, and he recognized Alois’ voice. Ciel smiled to himself—from the sound of it, Alois wasn’t too happy with how the visit had gone. He approached the source of the noises and came upon a half open door. He pushed it and entered a room that the massive desk by the window designated as an office. There were no shelves of books like in Ciel’s own office, but comfortable-looking sofas and a coffee table.

Alois stood in the middle of the room; he had pushed the coffee table away from its original place and was using the freed space to pile a variety of objects: Ciel could see a series of framed pictures, an Oriental-styled robe, a pocket watch, lamps and small statues of a dubious taste. Alois had his back to the door, and he was so engrossed in his task that Ciel managed to get closer to the pile without him noticing. He directed his attention to the pictures—he’d looked for Trancy family pictures all throughout the mansion and had found none, so he was curious. The only picture that wasn’t face down showed a younger Trancy standing next to a slim fair-haired woman, who was sitting on a chair with a toddler on her lap. It must be the late Lady Trancy with baby Alois before he was kidnapped. The child was blond just like the Alois Ciel knew, but, upon closer examination, Ciel noticed that the boy bore a beauty spot right under his left eye. The skin under Alois’ eyes, on the other hand, was flawless. _Got you!_

“What are you doing here?”

Alois had noticed Ciel, and he now looked at him with an outraged expression. There was something wild about him, a crazed light in his eyes that made Ciel wary.

“The door was open,” he merely said. “What’re you doing?”

“My idiot uncle has gone.” Alois waved at the piled objects. “I’m getting rid of that dirty old man’s things. I want no trace of him left!”

He stepped on one of the pictures, resting all of his weight on it until the protective glass cracked. “Nothing left!” he shouted. “You’re dead, dead, _dead_.”

He kneeled down and ripped shards of glass off the picture with his bare hands, seemingly uncaring if he cut his fingers on them. Blood dripped on the photo, and stained the fabric of the robe when Alois took hold of it and started tearing it apart.

“Die!” he was screaming hysterically. Ciel watched the display with appalled fascination, unwilling to intervene and bear the brunt of Alois’ madness. “You’re rotting underground! You’ll be dust soon! You are _nothing_.”

“My lord.”

Ciel turned to the door and for the first time, felt relief at Claude’s arrival. What had taken the demon so long? He should have been able to feel Alois’ distress from miles away.

“Allow me, master,” Claude said, and kneeled by Alois’ side. Alois threw himself in his butler’s arms, his whole frame trembling with violent sobs.

Ciel drew back uneasily to the corridor, letting them sort this out on their own. He wanted no part in Alois’ turmoil, wanted to run away from it as far as he could. He staggered down the corridor, grabbing his pounding head.

 _Let me introduce you to my son_. The arm around Alois’ waist. Trancy’s lecherous looks to the boy. Alois wasn’t Trancy’s son, Ciel was fairly certain of it now, but it didn’t mean that Trancy or Alois hadn’t believed it. And _yet_ ….

 _That dirty old man._ Ciel had to lean against the wall, overcome by a wave of vertigo mixed with nausea. He closed his eyes, his forehead pressed against the hard surface. He had barely known the late Earl Trancy, but suddenly he was viciously glad that the man was dead. 

He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, but food was the furthest thing from his mind. He spent the evening in his room, too agitated to read, or sleep, or reflect more on the situation. When sleep finally found him it was uneasy and wrecked with nightmares. Disembodied hands clung to him, featureless faces pressed to the bars of his cage, and that _laugh_ , that hideous laugh that followed him everywhere, no matter how fast he ran through the empty corridors of his mansion. Where was everyone? Why had they all abandoned him?

“Ciel?”

He woke up screaming. Immediately he brought a hand to his mouth to stifle the cry, ashamed of himself before he was even fully conscious. He didn’t do that anymore; he’d trained himself out of voicing his nightmares as soon as people other than him and Sebastian had started living at the mansion.

“Ciel, are you all right?”

He wasn’t home, of course, he was a prisoner at Alois Trancy’s mansion. It was night, and he’d only been dreaming. He wiped his cheeks and found them wet—what a disgrace he was.

“Ciel?”

“What?” Ciel snarled. His hands were shaking, and he shoved them under his covers to hide it.

Alois was framed in the doorway, a candelabrum in his hand. He was wearing a nightgown hemmed with lace and looked the very picture of abject misery.

“I can’t sleep,” he said.

“What is it to me?” Ciel replied. He felt on edge from his nightmare, and all he wanted was to be left alone while he found his bearings. “Ask your butler to sing you a lullaby.”

Alois tilted his head. “I thought you said he didn’t care about me.”

“ _I_ don’t care about you either.”

“Can I come to bed with you?”

“What? No!” Ciel exclaimed, but evidently his opinion on the matter didn’t count, because Alois walked up to the bed, set the candelabrum on the nightstand, and slipped into bed with Ciel.

Ciel groaned and scooped over to the edge. He was way too exhausted and unsettled to fight the issue. Maybe if both of them went to sleep right away, he could ignore the arrangement. The bed was big enough for it.

But as soon as Ciel closed his eyes, trying to will himself back to sleep, Alois whispered, “I’m glad he’s dead.”

Ciel didn’t want to talk about this, so he didn’t say anything, but it didn’t deter Alois. “I was so happy when he first found me, but I think there was something wrong with him. Does that make me a horrible person?”

How did he hope Ciel would answer this? “I don’t care what you thought about Trancy, but you kidnapped me. I think _that_ makes you a horrible person, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“Do you hate me that much?” 

How could he stand to sound so pathetic? “Yes,” Ciel said.

His answer was followed by a moment of blessed silence, which didn’t last as long as he might have wished.

“He would say that it was natural for father and son to take a bath together, but his hands would always wander down, and—”

God, Ciel so badly didn’t want to hear the details. He rolled to his side, back to Alois, and covered his ears with his hands. There was no escaping Alois, though: Ciel felt the bed shift as Alois moved toward him, and he curled in on himself in a childish attempt at protection. A hand touched his hip, curled around it and then slid down his stomach, slowly making its way lower. Something hot and wet brushed his ear, and that was when Ciel lost it: white-hot panic coursed through him and he sent his elbow backward, eliciting a cry of surprised pain. Ciel sat up and started kicking, again and again, meeting solid flesh and bone and kicking harder. A constant sound buzzed to his ears, and it took him a moment to realize that the sound was a litany of repeated words, _his_ words: “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me!”

There was a thunderous _boom_ when Alois fell off the bed. “What’s wrong with you?” he shouted, then yelped when Ciel threw his pillows at him in quick successions.

“Get out!” Ciel screamed. “ _Out!_ ”

He crawled across the bed to reach the nightstand and take the candelabrum Alois had left there. One of the candles was snuffed from the swift motion, but the other two shed wavering light on Alois’ startled face. For a moment their eyes met: Alois’ eyes were wide and red-rimmed, making him look like an innocent wounded creature. Ciel raised his arm over his head as though he was about to throw the candelabrum at Alois’ face.

Alois protectively curled his arms around his head, scrambling to his feet at the same time. 

“All right, all right, I’m going!”

Ciel remained frozen in that position for a few more minutes after Alois’ departure. He was gasping for breath, almost like when he was in the throes of an asthma attack, and shaking so hard that he put back the candelabrum on the nightstand for fear that he would accidentally set fire to the bed. He folded his arms around his chest, clutching his shoulders as if holding onto them would keep him from falling over the edge.

 _What’s wrong with you,_ Alois had asked, but Ciel would have been incapable of saying what it was, or explain the violence of his reaction. _Look at you_ , said the calm, detached part of himself. _You were looking down on him for acting hysterical, but you can’t really throw any stone._

After a while the shaking subsided and his breathing settled down, leaving Ciel drained and drenched with sweat. His head hurt fiercely and his stomach came as a close second. He longed for a bath, but the thought triggered the memory of his shared bath with Alois and he gagged. He spent some time curled into a miserable ball on the bed until his pragmatic side forced him out of bed. He couldn’t go back to sleep as he was, so he mechanically took his nightgown off and used the lukewarm water from the washstand to clean up. Then he put back the nightgown, which had had the time to dry a little, and climbed into bed. 

He would have thought it impossible for him to sleep after such an episode, but it seemed that it had left him with no energy for thoughts or emotions, because he managed to drift back to a dreamless slumber. 

\---

The atmosphere was tense the next day. Ciel woke up bleary-eyed and aching all over, as he had after his failed escape attempt on his first day here. He was lucid enough to feel thoroughly ashamed for his behaviour, and dreaded facing Alois. At breakfast, though, Alois didn’t look like he felt any better than Ciel, and the meal went on without attempts at conversation from either party. 

Ciel kept arranging his food different ways in his plate, reluctant to put any of it in his mouth. It wasn’t unappetizing; although Ciel didn’t find Claude’s cooking on par with Sebastian’s, it was still good food, fit for an earl’s table. But, whether from emotional turmoil or for some other reason, his stomach hurt and he wasn’t hungry. The ruby ring on Alois’ finger had captured his attention again. He could have sworn he had dreamed about it last night, among other things, and for the life of him he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Was it his mind’s way of keeping him distracted from other, more unpleasant topics? 

He knew he had stared too long when Alois snapped at him, “What is it? Do I have something in my teeth?”

Ciel’s fork slipped from his fingers and fell into his plate with a clang. He frowned at it, and then shook his hand, trying to get the numb feeling that had spread to his fingers to pass. 

“Is there something wrong with your food?” Alois asked, looking at Ciel’s plate. “You haven’t eaten a bite.”

“The simple sight of you has killed my appetite,” Ciel said tartly, pushing his plate away. “I’m not hungry.”

He could have sworn that a smile flashed on Alois’ lips then, but it was gone so quickly that he couldn’t tell for sure. 

“You don’t look so well, Ciel,” Alois said in a too-sweet voice that instantly set Ciel’s teeth on edge. “Are you sick?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

Alois shuffled closer, dragging his chair along with him until it bumped into Ciel’s. He cupped Ciel’s forehead with his hand, as if to check his temperature. Ciel tried to bat the hand away, but his limbs weren’t answering him properly and his gestures were uncoordinated and inefficient. 

Alois tutted like a concerned mother and said, “It doesn’t feel like you have a fever, but you’re very pale.”

“I’m fine!”

“Claude! Take him to his room so he can rest.”

Claude advanced and held his arms out as though he intended to carry him, which propelled Ciel into getting up under his own power.

“I can get there on my own just fine,” he said, scowling at the demon and raising a finger in warning.

Claude escorted him all the way to his room, while Ciel wondered why he was letting himself be bullied into bedroom rest. He knew that he couldn’t resist Claude, but he should have put up a better protestation just for the principle of it. The truth was, he _did_ feel sick. As soon as Claude left him in his room he collapsed on his bed without even checking if the door had been locked.

He curled into a foetal position and closed his eyes, intending to rest them for a moment. Claude and Alois. There was something about them he needed to examine, but he had to chase the thought. Ah, yes, now he remembered. Yesterday, he’d been struck by the fact that it had taken a while for Claude to get to Alois when he was so distraught. And during the night, he hadn’t come at all. Was it that he’d felt that Alois wasn’t in any real danger, or had he felt nothing at all? The bond between them. Ciel had had that thought before: if Alois’ seal didn’t hold as much power as Ciel’s did, then maybe Claude couldn’t feel Alois as well as Sebastian could feel Ciel. Maybe there was a limit to the bond, be it a matter of distance or of acuteness of the danger. Ciel’s next move should be to try and test it. He would—

Ciel woke up, startled to realize that he’d fallen asleep without meaning to. He didn’t know how long he’d slumbered, but a cup of tea had been deposed on his nightstand and it was still steaming. His pillow was wet with drool and Ciel rubbed at his mouth hurriedly, grimacing in disgust. He sat up, and the whole room seemed to sway with the motion. He moaned, grabbing his head as though he could keep everything in place that easily.

He felt awful. He started to drink his cup of tea, hoping it would help, but he could barely taste it. His head and stomach hurt badly, his chest felt tight to the point of pain, his limbs ached, and his hands tingled with an annoying pin-and-needles sensation that was just the cherry on top of overall terribleness. Then his stomach cramped and Ciel folded on himself, biting down on a sound of pain. He put the teacup on the nightstand to avoid spilling it over himself and shut his eyes tightly as a barrage against the sensation. What was wrong with him? He couldn’t deny now that the affliction he suffered was of a physical nature; it seemed impossible to feel that bad from a few nightmares. Even in the early days after his captivity, back when he was still screaming himself awake every night, he hadn’t felt that wretched.

Another cramp made him curl tighter, the top of his head resting on his knees. He made himself breathe through the pain, in and out. What could be ailing him? Was it food poisoning? How could it be, when he’d barely eaten for the past two days? A wave of nausea overcame him and he scrambled down the bed, a hand covering his mouth. He swallowed hard, hoping for the feeling to pass, but when it hit again he rushed to the washstand and threw up in the basin that was on it. There wasn’t much for him to throw up but bile and tea, and it burned terribly on its way out. Ciel coughed, eyes watering from the pungent smell. He wiped his mouth and glanced at the vomit in the basin, a yellow-greenish mixture with tiny specks of red. Blood? Ciel grew cold as a sudden thought presented itself to him: food poisoning wasn’t likely, but what about plain poisoning? 

Feeling dizzy again he stumbled back to the bed and sat down on it, trying to analyze the situation. Thoughts sloshed around inside his brain, almost too slippery for him to catch. _Focus, damn it!_ He dug his nails into the meat of his thigh. What was going on? He’d been feeling under the weather for a few days, but he’d ascribed it to stress, or getting ill, which unfortunately wasn’t unusual for him. If he’d been poisoned, though… He attempted to list his symptoms: the headaches, the nausea and overall lack of appetite, the dizziness, the cramps. Maybe also his issues with sleep, which he’d thought to be the cause of his feeling unwell rather another symptom. What else? His fingers still tingled unpleasantly, and he rubbed the tips against his palms to try and bring back feeling to them. That was odd, too. He glanced again in the direction the basin containing the results of his being sick. The poison had to be something he wouldn’t have detected through taste or smell. Arsenic, maybe? But how had he ingested it? He shared all of his meals with Alois, eating from the same platters, drinking tea from the same pot… Wait a minute. Ciel’s eyes travelled to the teacup on his nightstand and widened in horror. His _morning tea_. That, he wasn’t sharing with Alois. And now that he thought of it, Claude had the odd habit of staying for a few minutes until Ciel had started drinking, even as Ciel had made clear that he would never require his help to get dressed.

Anger pierced through the haze of his physical discomfort and he clenched his hands into fists. Very well, then. If Alois had poisoned his tea, then the time for niceties was over. Ciel had let himself be lulled into a false sense of—not safety, exactly, because he wasn’t an idiot, but at least he’d thought that Alois would rather play mind games with him rather than physically harm him. He wouldn’t be that stupid again. 

He got up and grabbed his teacup, and opened the window to get rid of the content. The good thing about puking was that if this particular cup of tea was laced with arsenic, he must have regurgitated the poison already. He cleaned the basin with the water from the pitcher, and used more water to wash the foul taste from his mouth—not swallowing in case that was poisoned too. He felt a little better now that he’d thrown up, and indignation was giving him a second wind, so he settled on the bed again to think. How did poisoning him feature in Alois’ plans for Ciel, whatever they were? If Alois had wished to kill him he could have given him a stronger dose of the poison, or used a thousand of other ways. If he wanted to torture him, there were also other, much better ways to do it. So Ciel had to assume that the poison was meant to weaken rather than kill—wear down his body, muddle his mind, break his will. What puzzled Ciel, though, was that Alois had never made any demand from him. What was he wearing him down for? And how was Ciel meant to resist this?

There wasn’t much he could do to heal but drink a lot of water in the hope of flushing the poison out of his system, and try to avoid ingesting more. If Claude kept watching him as he drunk his morning tea, then Ciel would need to make himself vomit afterwards. He grimaced, his throat still raw from his previous bout of sickness. It would be most disagreeable, but there was no helping it. For good measure, he’d probably have to throw up anything that was served to him and not shared with Alois. What a bother.

Ciel massaged his forehead, hoping to ease his pounding headache. It was more than time to counterattack, he told himself; he could no longer waste time equivocating, but had to work on figuring out the weakness in Alois and Claude’s bond.

_Watch yourself, Alois Trancy, because it’s on. You have no idea who you’re dealing with._


	5. Chapter 5

Figuring the weak spots in Alois and Claude’s bond was what Ciel applied himself to for the next few days. He tried to be methodical about it, as much as his circumstances allowed. The first thing was to track Claude’s position: until now, what Claude did with his day when he wasn’t in Ciel’s presence had been a mystery. Ciel didn’t know the details of what taking care of a big household entailed—good service was covert, and Sebastian was the best—but he knew enough to be aware that Claude must have work to do in every corner of the house, especially since he had no other help than Hannah and the triplets. There had to be moments during the day when Claude and Alois were separated by the length of that vast mansion. 

He found that if he simply asked Hannah where Claude was, she generally told him. He paid attention to the menial tasks that Alois gave Claude to do—mending a piece of clothing, getting something from the cellar, cooking a particularly elaborate dish—and, very rarely so as not to draw attention, manufactured small acts of mischief to keep him busy. The havoc his own servants managed to wreck on a regular basis gave him inspiration: he turned up the heat in the glasshouse so as to kill the plants, messed with the soap for the laundry. There was always a risk that Claude would figure out that it was him, but the butler never said or did anything. It could have been that he didn’t know, or that he knew but wouldn’t do anything without an explicit order from his master.

Once he was reasonably sure of where Claude was, he would make his move on Alois. It couldn’t be anything too overt—he didn’t want to risk retaliation—but it had to be big enough to warrant the demon’s attention. It helped that Alois tended to wail for Claude at the slightest vexation. Ciel started small: spilling ink on documents Alois was supposed to sign, stealing away his favourite tie, casually mentioning he thought he’d seen a rat in a corner of the room and watching the ensuing panic. He graduated to making Alois tumble down the stairs by abandoning small objects in his way and “accidentally” drawing blood during fencing practice. By the end of the week Ciel had figured that past a certain distance, Claude couldn’t feel it if there was something wrong with Alois. He made careful mental notes of the specifics, and moved on to his next objective. 

He had assumed that since Alois had used the present tense to speak of Sebastian, it meant his butler was still alive. If he was, he had to be kept somewhere, bound maybe by some arcane knowledge that Claude had of his own kind, and that kept Sebastian from answering Ciel’s call. Of course, Sebastian could be held on some other Trancy property far away from here, but the fact that Ciel seemed to be barred from accessing parts of the house made him think that Sebastian might actually be under the same roof. Unfortunately, any of his attempts to sneak into the forbidden parts were thwarted, and the only thing he could do was to narrow them down to the western wing’s first floor.

All the while he tried to maintain the appearance that he was sick and weakened, so that Alois and Claude would think him subdued. It didn’t require much acting skills, because his sickliness wasn’t all faked. After a few days of making himself regurgitate his morning tea some of his symptoms eased, giving his theory confirmation. But he still couldn’t sleep very well, had nightmares most nights, and his appetite wasn’t returning. When he got dressed in the mornings he could see that he’d lost weight, and he didn’t need a doctor to know that he hadn’t had much to waste in the first place. Lack of sleep and nourishment took a toll on him, leaving him exhausted and prone to bouts of dizziness. All that sustained him was stubborn contrariness and the drive to win this game, but that would only take him so far. He knew his physical limitations better than most, and each new day brought him closer to them. One way or another, he had to put an end this.

He decided to put his plan into action at the beginning of his third week at the Trancy mansion. He’d renounced finding out if Sebastian was there—once he was free he could come back with able-bodied fighters, but right now he was out-powered and weakening by the day. He’d heard Claude say to Hannah that he would be busy trimming the shrubs in the garden, so he slipped inside his trousers the knife he’d stolen from Hannah and sharpened to a dangerous edge, and waited for the moment Alois would turn his back on him.

“How are you feeling today?” Alois asked Ciel, voice dripping with exaggerated concern. 

What was annoying in pretending to be sicker than he was the false compassion Alois showered him with. It was especially galling considering how _he_ was responsible for Ciel’s failing health. The worst part was that Alois liked to show how much he cared by sometimes coming at night to share Ciel’s bed, apparently undeterred by Ciel’s violent reaction the first time. ‘To help you sleep,’ he claimed, and spent those nights wrapped around Ciel, ensuring that Ciel couldn’t sleep a wink the whole time, which didn’t help his overall exhaustion. At least Alois was never again as free with his hands as that first time, maybe out of fear that Ciel would be pushed into hurting him for real.

“I’m all right,” Ciel said, because this was the answer Alois would have come to expect from him, but he took care to say it in the faintest voice he could manage.

Alois had dragged Ciel into the billiard room, a room where they had never been together before—probably because, as evidenced by the way he handled the cue, Alois didn’t know how to play. He was amusing himself right now with shooting the balls on the table with no regards for the rules, while Ciel sagged on a chair right behind him. Truth to be told, he _was_ feeling a little faint. The weight of the knife against his skin was nothing compared to the weight it had on his mind, and Ciel, to speak plainly, seemed to be having a case of the nerves. He’d killed people before: he’d shot a number of them, had ordered many a death from Sebastian, and considered himself responsible for each of them. It wasn’t the morality of what he was about to do that concerned him, but the practicality of it. How should he proceed? Should he stab Alois in the back—and risk missing vital organs—or slit his throat, maybe? If he missed, then Alois would be able to fight back, and the longer it took to kill him, the more chances there were that one of the demons would come and interrupt them. After that, Ciel wasn’t sure Alois would still be keen on playing ‘nice.’

Steeling his nerves, Ciel stood up and got the knife out. He approached Alois without making any sound as the boy chattered inanely, leaning over the edge of the table to the point where he was standing on his tiptoes. Suddenly Alois straightened up, his heels clicking against the floor as he fell back on them. Ciel hurriedly hid the knife away, just in time before Alois turned to face him. 

“You’re planning something, aren’t you?” Alois said, looking at Ciel through narrowed eyes. 

“Huh? What would I be planning?” Not his best acting, but he was caught off guards. Had Alois known all along what he was doing?

“Planning something is what you do. And that fencing ‘accident’!” Alois waved the hand that was still bandaged from it. “Were you trying to kill me, Ciel Phantomhive? Holding up to your reputation?” He had the nerves to look _disappointed_.

“Well, you did poison my tea,” Ciel replied haughtily. Obviously, Alois wasn’t fooled by his act anymore, but he also didn’t seem to know much about Ciel’s plans. Better let go of part of his secrets to protect the crucial ones. “I admit I didn’t take it very well.”

Alois laughed. “Oh, so you figured it out. Is it too late to apologize for that? You’re so full of yourself, I thought it would be a good way to take you down a peg or two.”

“I’m not that easily taken down.”

“I know that.” Alois took a step closer to Ciel, and pinched his chin between two fingers, looking into his eyes. “You wouldn’t be you if you were,” he murmured dreamily, almost as though he were talking to himself. He stepped back, grinning wider. “But you shouldn’t underestimate me either. I’ve had another ace up my sleeve all along!”

Bringing two of his fingers to his lips he let out a piercing whistle, on the trail of which the door opened: two of the triplets entered, dragging a third party between them.

“Do you like my present, Ciel?” Alois asked, his voice vibrant with glee.

At first, Ciel couldn’t identify the unknown party hanging between the two servants. The person had their head bowed, seemingly barely able to keep on their feet. But then, on some invisible cue from Alois, the servant on the right pulled the prisoner’s long, luxurious mane of brown hair to tip their head, and Ciel recognized the face immediately: _Soma._

“I’ve always wanted an Indian prince!” Alois said. “He was making a bit of a fuss when the servants got him out of his room, so they dosed him with a little laudanum. Otherwise he’s fine, don’t worry. Not a hair on his head was touched.”

Why? _How_? Ciel remembered that Soma had been at the party too, but he wouldn’t have thought Alois would take an interest in him. Was he, and not Sebastian, the reason Ciel couldn’t get to parts of the western wing? What did Alois plan to do with the prince?

“What’s the meaning of this?” he finally managed to ask, trying to get over his surprise.

“Well, I would have preferred to get my hands on your lovely fiancé, but she couldn’t come to the party, so your best friend had to do. See, I never thought you would be easy to cow. A little leverage couldn’t hurt.”

“My what? Where did you hear that? That idiot isn’t my best friend!”

The declaration made Alois’ smile falter a little. “Maybe you need some time to be reacquainted with each other. I’m generous; I can give you that much.”

Alois ordered the triplets—the third one happened to be waiting just outside the room—to ‘escort’ Ciel and Soma to Ciel’s room. The room was locked behind them, and Ciel was left alone with a semi-comatose prince, still reeling from this unexpected turn of event. 

He critically eyed the prince, sprawled over the bed. Soma groaned, his eyes fluttering, and he batted a hand in the air as though he wanted to cling to something and haul himself up. Just how ‘little’ was a ‘little laudanum’? Ciel needed to speak to that moronic prince _now_ , so he got the water-filled pitcher from the washstand and threw half of its content at Soma’s face.

The prince spluttered and coughed, raising an arm to his head to protect himself from the aggression. Ciel sighed and splashed him with the rest of the water.

“Wake up!” he ordered.

“Wha—” Soma mumbled. “Wha’s goin’ on? Agni?”

Ciel climbed on the wet bed with him and grabbed his shoulders. “Come on, wake up! I need you conscious.”

“Ci—el?” That seemed to jolt his awareness more efficiently than the water had. “Ciel!” he exclaimed in a stronger voice, and struggled into a sitting position. Ciel moved away to give him room. “You’re here!”

“I believe that should be my line,” Ciel said dryly. “How are you here too? What happened at the party?”

Soma rubbed his face wearily, and it took a few more minutes before Ciel could coax a coherent story out of him: it appeared that he’d been kidnapped in circumstances much similar to Ciel’s, by following Alois disguised as a maid into a room under false pretence.

“She told me that you were feeling unwell and that you’d asked for me!”

“Asked for—Oh, for heaven’s sake, of all the stupid—” Ciel buried his hand into his hair and pulled at it in frustration. “In what universe would I call for you if I were feeling unwell? Didn’t it occur to you that if such were the case, I would merely ask Sebastian to take me home?”

“I—” Soma crossed his arms over his chest in a defensive posture. “I was worried, all right. I didn’t have time to think!”

“Well, never mind that, what’s done is done. What happened next?”

Soma’s captivity seemed to have been on the boring side so far. As Ciel had guessed, he’d been kept in a room on the west wing’s first floor, and only ever saw Hannah or the triplets as they brought him his lunch or books to pass the time. He’d pestered them with questions but had received no answer, and hadn’t even known that Ciel was in the house too.

“I’m so glad I found you.” And, before Ciel could point out that he hadn’t exactly found him, but rather been brought to him, Soma went on, “Where’s Sebastian? How could he let this happen to you?”

“I don’t know. I thought at first that he’d been killed, but Alois has used the present tense to talk about him, so I’m not so sure anymore. I thought he might have been held in the house too, but—”

Where was Sebastian if he wasn’t dead or held prisoner somewhere in the mansion? Why hadn’t he answered Ciel’s summon? Ciel was so deep in thought that it took a moment to notice the despondent look on Soma’s face.

“What is it?”

“What do you think happened to Agni? He must have looked for me. Do you think they—”

Ciel thought that if Agni had gotten in the way of Soma’s kidnapping, then chances were that Alois had had him killed. There would be no benefit in keeping him alive. It didn’t seem wise to voice that thought to Soma, though. 

“Maybe they let him believe you’d already left some other way,” he hazarded.

It sounded weak to him, but Soma brightened immediately. “You’re right! Agni wouldn’t be so easy to kill anyway. So, what does Earl Trancy want with you? And with me, for that matter?”

“I don’t know, since he won’t tell me anything. I have come to think that the only thing he wants is to break me,” Ciel muttered bitterly. “As for _you_ —” He looked up to pin Soma with a glare. “—it seems that Alois got into his head that he could use you as leverage against me. When will you stop going around claiming to be my best friend?”

“Well, it’s true.”

“Ugh, you’re—” Ciel gritted his teeth. It was useless getting dragged into that argument again. Soma seemed to live in a world where all of Ciel’s rebuttals translated to declarations of friendship. “Well, look where saying you’re my best friend got you! I have enemies—criminals, most of them, who won’t hesitate to use everything and everyone to hurt me. Flaunting your acquaintance with me is never going to advantage you. Do you understand?”

Soma bit his lip and looked down in contrition. “I understand. Sorry.”

“You’re here, now. We work with what we have.” Ciel rest his chin on his knuckles, considering the prince. Now that he was more awake, Soma didn’t look worse for the wear; a little pale, maybe, but more like he hadn’t seen the sun in a while than anything more concerning. Although, given Ciel’s own experience with poison, it probably didn’t hurt to be thorough.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked Soma, who looked at him with a bemused expression. “Do you experience any headache or nausea? Vomiting? Cramps? Numbness or pin-and-needles in the hands?”

“No, nothing like that. I’ve been fine, mostly just bored and frustrated.”

“Good.”

“But why are you asking me those questions?”

“I wanted to make sure they weren’t poisoning your food. Alois probably didn’t think there would be much of a point… until now.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, willing his returning headache to subside. “But you should be careful with what you’re given to eat from now on. If you start experiencing the symptoms I mentioned you should—”

“Wait, what? Ciel!” Soma grabbed Ciel’s wrist, and Ciel shook him off irritably. “What’re you talking about? Poison?”

Ciel let out a put-upon sigh. “I realized a few days ago that they were adding arsenic to my morning tea,” he explained. His mouth pulled down at the memory. It wasn’t enough for Alois to kidnap him and keep him prisoner; he had to ruin tea for him too. “Not enough to kill me, but—”

“Arsenic? Ciel!” Soma grabbed his shoulders and examined him with wide eyes. “You look terrible. You look _sick_.”

Ciel caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the oak commode. He indeed looked terrible: sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, sallow complexion. He hadn’t spent much time examining his reflection for the past few days, because it told him nothing he didn’t already know. He wasn’t doing well, but the only thing he could do about it was to find a way to run away. And Soma’s presence only added complications to an already dire situation.

“You’re very thin, too.” Soma was now patting him down, as though looking for something. “Is that a bruise on your face? You’re—”

“I’m fine,” Ciel said, irritated. He jerked away from Soma’s grasp and slid down the bed. Unfortunately for the point he was trying to make, when he tried to get up his vision greyed at the edges and he lost his balance.

“Ciel!”

Soma caught him and forced him to sit back on the bed. “Look at you! You can’t tell me you’re feeling well when you can barely stand.”

“Oh, do shut up.” To his utmost annoyance the room was spinning around him, so Ciel kept a hand pressed over his eyes and waited for it to stop. “Of course I don’t feel well, I’ve been bloody poisoned! When I say I’m fine, I mean that I can handle it.”

“You shouldn’t have to handle it. You—”

Ciel wrenched his hand from his eyes to be able to scowl at Soma. “What do you think I should do about it? Shall we call a doctor? Will you nurse me back to health, as you did when I was investigating the circus?”

“I—”

Ciel waved at the room, encompassing it in its entirety with a wide gesture. “This may be a golden cage, but make no mistake, it _is_ a cage. All we can do for the moment is survive until we can escape.”

“You’re right,” Soma said, although with some obvious reluctance. “Do you—have a plan? To escape, I mean?”

“I _had_ a plan. I was about to stab Alois when he had you brought in.” Ciel rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’m still not sure whether he knew that I was going to act at that moment, or if this was just a lucky coincidence—lucky for him. Hmm.”

He still had his knife, and he could still make use of the observations he’d made on the bond between Alois and Claude. Soma’s presence was a wrench in his plans, but instead of moping about it he should try and turn this setback to his advantage. After all, Soma may be a lot of things, but he was unconditionally on Ciel’s side. It could change things to not be facing Alois and his consortium of demons on his own. And, even though the prince acted like a bumbling fool most of the time, he wasn’t actually stupid. He’d proven that he could have his use when they were in Weston.

“All right,” he said. “My plan might actually still hold. I guess the first thing we should do is to find you a weapon too.”

“A weapon?” Ciel showed him the knife he’d sharpened, and Soma gasped. “You mean you were really going to stab him?”

“Yes,” Ciel said, annoyed. “That’s the word I used, I believe. What did you think I meant?”

“I, I don’t know.” Soma buried his face in his hands. “My mind still feels foggy. I don’t think I can—”

“Well, have a nap.” Ciel waved an impatient toward the part of the bed that wasn’t wet. “We’ll talk later.”

Soma protested a little, but with a few sharp words Ciel cut his objections short, and, as soon as he’d rested his head on the pillow, Soma’s eyes fluttered shut. After a few minutes he started snoring, a low rumbling sound akin to the working of a small engine. Ciel could probably have used a nap of his own, but he didn’t want to sleep on a wet bed, and his mind was whirling with thoughts and half-formed plans. He stood up and paced the room for a little while, until he felt too dizzy and had to sit down on the chair by his bed lest he keeled over. He felt both achingly exhausted and vibrating with nerves, and found this state of being to be most vexatious. 

Would Soma have the stomach to help him kill Alois? Maybe he would be better suited to another task, such as being on the lookout for the other servants. Ciel had always focused on making sure that Claude couldn’t interrupt him, but, although the other demons followed Claude, Ciel couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t try to stop him from hurting Alois. There was also the matter of escaping the mansion after killing Alois: would Claude lose interest, or would he want to take revenge on the people who’d ruined his dinner? 

Eventually Ciel managed to doze off, sitting on the chair, arms crossed and chin tucked against his chest. Failed murder attempts apparently took a lot out of him.

\---

When Ciel came back to himself, the sun had started to go down and he surmised that it should be almost time for dinner. He wondered if they would have dinner with Alois, as Ciel had since his kidnapping, or if their meal would be served here. He wasn’t sure how the reveal of Soma’s presence changed things. Speak of the devil—Soma was stirring on the bed. He stretched, yawned, and blinked blearily at Ciel. “Oh,” he said, and from the expression on his face Ciel could tell everything had come back to him at once.

A series of light knocks rattled on the door. “I’m guessing it’s dinner time,” Ciel said, which made Soma look more apprehensive.

Their visitor was Claude, unsurprisingly, and he’d come to escort them to the dinning room. Ciel had kept the knife hidden under his clothes, and from time to time he would feel for its shape under the layers of fabric. A knife wouldn’t do much good against Claude, but the weapon comforted him nonetheless. Was Claude aware of what Ciel had tried to do? He didn’t know enough on the extent of demons’ awareness to tell, but if Claude had known, why wouldn’t have he tried to stop Ciel? It felt to Ciel like he was missing a piece of the puzzle, and little bothered him more than the vulnerable position resulting from not having a grasp on all the information.

Alois welcomed them with off-putting cheerfulness, as if they were old acquaintances sharing a friendly meal rather than a kidnapper with his victims. Soma was very tense at first, but Alois overwhelmed him with a barrage of questions, about his country, his life as a prince, his reason for coming to England. After a while Soma yielded in the face of so much interest thrown at him and relaxed a fair amount.

“Don’t you feel homesick, though?” Alois asked. Chin resting in his cupped hand, he was idly swirling the red wine in his glass and looked the picture of raptured attention. “Why did you decide to stay in England?”

“Oh, because of Ciel, of course,” Soma answered without hesitation, and Ciel groaned inwardly. He could have throttled the prince, but no doubt that Alois was watching out for his reaction, so he took care to hide his emotions. “It’s thanks to Ciel that I realized I was a selfish man,” Soma went on. “So I want to become better, and show him. Also, I’ve never had a lot of friends—or any friends at all, really. I had servants, and siblings I never had much of a relationship with.”

_Shut up, you moron! Don’t you realize what’s happening?_

“Oh, really,” Alois said in that sickly-sweet voice Ciel had learned to dread, eyes crinkling at the corner. “What a touching story.”

Ciel tensed, and his grip on his fork and knife tightened. He checked on Claude’s position, and saw that the butler was standing one step behind Alois’ chair, hands behind his back. Soma was sitting across Ciel and Alois, and the table was too wide for Ciel to try and kick him in the shin.

“And I like England, too. It’s a bit cold, but—”

“Claude,” Alois said, so softly that Soma probably didn’t hear him. 

In a split second, Claude had jumped over the table to Soma and lifted the prince off his chair one-handed, squeezing his neck. Soma’s own hands pawed at Claude’s arm, his legs kicking back against his chair. He hadn’t even had enough time to cry out, and now his mouth opened and closed on a soundless scream. 

Ciel made himself let go of his cutlery, and he put his hands flat on the table so they wouldn’t shake or grip anything out of nervousness. 

“What are you trying to do?” he asked, his voice even but peremptory. 

“He’s your friend, isn’t he, Ciel?” Alois said, enunciating the word ‘friend’ as though it was something delicious he needed to savour. “What do you think? Should Claude crush his windpipe?”

“What’s a hostage worth if you kill him right away?”

“I can ask Claude to relieve him of a limb or two, if you prefer. Or an eye! Wouldn’t it be terribly appropriate?”

“There seems to be a misunderstanding,” Ciel said coolly. “The prince isn’t my friend.”

“Really? It’s not what he’s saying.”

Soma’s breathing had turned into painful wheezing, but Ciel was careful not to look in his direction, keeping his focus on Alois’ smiling face.

“He’s a delusional fool. He latched onto me and I haven’t been able to get rid of him. Capturing him was a waste of your energy.”

Alois lost his smile and frowned, momentarily disconcerted. “If he’s not your friend,” he said, “then you don’t mind it if Claude kills him.” His smile reappeared, sharp and cruel.

Ciel couldn’t help a glance at Soma, whose face was flushed and eyes almost bulging out of their sockets. 

“ _I_ don’t care,” Ciel said. “But _you_ should.”

“Why is that?”

“He’s an Indian prince. Maybe you assume his country is too far away from ours to matter, but let me tell you that his people is a vindictive one. They won’t tire until they have their revenge on you.” He had no idea whether there was a lick of truth in what he was saying, but he would wager that Alois didn’t either. “Soma is a forgiving soul; he could persuade them not to hurt you, but he can’t do that if he’s dead.”

“Claude would protect me.”

“I’m sure he would. But having to constantly watch your back is a wearying life. Are you really sure you’re prepared for that?”

Alois glared at him, and a few more seconds ticked by. They felt like minutes, or even hours, and Ciel could barely hear anything over the thunder of his pounding heart, but then Alois snapped another order at his butler and Claude released Soma. The prince tumbled to his knees, wrecked with coughs. 

“Take them back,” Alois ordered again, then turned his back to Ciel as though to dismiss him. Ciel allowed himself a small breath of relief.

Claude carried Soma in his arms, ignoring the prince’s feeble protests. Ciel followed behind, walking as though he were in a dream. As soon as they were alone in his room, he collapsed in his chair and wiped his brow with a weary hand. They’d come so very close to an unfortunate outcome; Ciel could barely believe that he’d managed to convince Alois to let Soma live. He shivered, an unnatural cold seeping through his bones, and his vision darkened. For a moment he thought he was about to pass out, until he managed to get a hold of himself again.

A sound from the bed directed his attention back to Soma, who had been deposed there by Claude and was rubbing his neck with a grimace.

“Are you all right?” Ciel asked.

Soma glanced up to him but didn’t respond immediately. His expression was one that Ciel had never seen him wear: he stared guardedly at Ciel, watching him as if he didn’t know him. 

“Were you—” Soma rasped. He coughed, swallowed, and tried again, “Were you really going to let him kill me?”

“I—“ Ciel felt himself flush, beset by a foreign sentiment of shame. What was he feeling shameful for? He’d _saved_ the idiot’s life. “You’ve been kidnapped because he thought he could use you against me—as long as he believed that he would have kept tormenting you to get to me. Now I’ve managed to convince him not to kill you lest your people exact revenge on him. I’ll bet he doesn’t quite know what to do with you, and this is something we can take advantage of.”

Soma coughed again, eyes downcast. A few more seconds passed before he finally sighed, and said, “I understand. You had to pretend you didn’t care.” 

Ciel was expecting him to gleefully add, _but you do care_ , and, although he’d repeated countless times to Soma that they weren’t friends, he felt reluctant to say it again in those circumstances. 

“I’m sorry,” Soma said, startling Ciel. “You’d warned me that he’d want to use our relationship against you, and yet I—I didn’t think there was any harm in answering his questions. I figured he probably knew a lot about us anyway.”

“He probably did,” Ciel conceded. “It still wasn’t a good idea to give him confirmation.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I acted like a fool.”

“He can be very charming when he puts his mind to it,” Ciel said doubtfully; he’d always found Alois obnoxious, but he could see how other people might feel differently.

The conversation lapsed into awkward silence, Soma acting too subdued to contribute to it as he usually would. Eventually, night fell upon them and Ciel had to consider the practicality of their sleeping arrangement. 

“The bed is big enough to share,” Soma said with a shrug, obviously having no problem with the concept.

It was a fact that the bed could be comfortably shared by two people, and Ciel neither fancied sleeping on the floor, nor could make Soma do it after what he’d been through. He didn’t enjoy having to share a bed or even a room at night because he valued his privacy, but if need be he could overcome his personal preferences. What really bothered him was that he hadn’t had a peaceful night in a while, and if he shared a bed with Soma the prince was bound to notice it. 

“Let’s prepare for the night,” he said tightly.

Nightclothes fitting Soma had been brought in, no doubt by Claude. It was a relief for Ciel, who had the nasty suspicion that the prince wouldn’t mind sleeping in the nude. As if to confirm this thought, Soma started to undress without turning or hiding in any way, completely unselfconscious.

“For the love of—What’re you doing?”

“What do you mean?” Soma asked as he dropped his trousers. 

“Oh my—” Ciel covered his eyes and turned around for good measure. “You have no shame.”

“What’s there to feel shame about? We’re both men.”

Well, at least Soma seemed to be feeling better, Ciel thought sourly. He got undressed behind the protective shelter of one of the bed’s curtains—they may have been ‘both men,’ as Soma put it, but Ciel didn’t want to risk him getting a glimpse of his back. After they’d both settled in the bed, Ciel caught Soma rubbing again at his neck. From this close he could see red marks drawing an outline of Claude’s fingers on the prince’s skin.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, feeling oddly guilty. 

Soma flashed him a brilliant smile, so quickly it had to be partially fake. “Barely. Should I snuff the candle?”

“Yes. No, wait.” Ciel raised a hand to signal him to stop, and shifted into a sitting position. He felt too vulnerable lying down for this conversation. “I want to tell you something before we go to sleep.”

Soma sat up too. Hair fell into his eyes and he shook his head to clear it away. “What is it?” he asked.

“I—” God, how should he bring this up? Better be as factual and direct as he could. “It’s possible that I wake you up during the night. I have nightmares sometimes—lately, more often than not.”

“Oh.”

“They get violent.” Soma was watching him with such open, honest concern that Ciel had to avert his eyes, knowing himself to be red in the face. “I might scream. Don’t be surprised, it’s perfectly normal.”

“Normal? How could—”

“If that happens, I’ll only ask one thing of you,” Ciel cut him off.

“Of course, anything!”

“Do not touch me, under any pretext.”

“But—” Ciel reached out and covered Soma’s mouth with his hand, preventing him from voicing his objections.

“This is important, Soma.” At the enunciation of his name, Soma stopped trying to speak. “You may think you’re bringing me comfort, but you won’t be.”

“Mmhm.” Soma gently tapped on Ciel’s wrist to signal he wanted to say something. “What can I do, then? How can I comfort you?”

“You can’t, and it’s fine,” Ciel said firmly. “I’m not expecting comfort. Don’t do anything, all right? You need only to leave me be. I’ll try to be quiet.”

Soma looked at him with sad eyes and Ciel huffed in annoyance. He lied back down, turning his back to Soma to indicate that the conversation was over. For a few seconds, Ciel expected the prince to try to talk to him anyway, but then he heard him blow a breath and the flickering light from the candle went away.

It took him a while to find sleep, as he was too tense to relax enough for it. He was too keenly aware of Soma’s presence in the bed from the way the mattress shifted when he changed position, or the low hum of his breathing, slowing down as he fell asleep. Ciel held himself rigidly, not moving an inch and keeping his back to Soma. The bed moved again as Soma turned in his sleep. Ciel could tell from the sound of his breathing that he was closer now, close enough to touch. If he rolled again in the wrong direction he would bump into Ciel, if he reached out he could—Ciel startled, suddenly certain that he’d felt something brush his hip. His arm flailed wildly at his back, but there was nothing but air.

 _You’re being ridiculous_ , he berated himself. _Soma isn’t Alois—he isn’t going to try to molest you in your sleep. The most you risk from him is to get smothered by his pitiful attempts at caretaking._

At least with Soma here, Alois wasn’t likely to come bother him again. There was comfort to be found in that thought. Soon enough Ciel was too unfocused for coherent thoughts and he sunk into oblivion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed your surprise!Soma! I love his and Ciel's friendship so much. I'm adding Soma to the character list now.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: since chapter 135, this is in keeping with canon (it wasn't when I wrote the fic), but be warned that there are references in this chapter to Ciel being sexually abused by the cult. There's nothing graphic, though.

_Look at him. All that flawless, porcelain-smooth skin._

He couldn’t speak—something was obstructing his mouth. He couldn’t move either, hands and feet bound by ropes that forced his limbs apart, keeping him spread over the table. A hand wavered in and out of his vision field, the light catching the ruby adorning one of the fingers, making it bloom into a small flower of scarlet radiance. 

_You’re a good boy._ A hand petted his hair as though he were a puppy; he tried to scream and protest the touch, but his impotent cry remained trapped in his throat. Someone laughed. The sound rippled in the air around him, tainting it, and he squirmed, closed his eyes, wished he could cover his ears.

 _Hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you. Kill him, kill him, kill them,_ kill them all. 

Someone yelped. Ciel thrashed around, suddenly free to move. He kicked at the weight stifling him and met little resistance—which was when he realized that it was merely a weight of blankets. Nothing was holding him down, nothing was restraining or gagging him. He huffed and puffed as though he had run a long distance, and tried to put his thoughts in order: he was in bed, he was in Alois’ mansion, and Soma—

A light pierced the darkness and Ciel blinked against its brilliance. “What—” His throat felt raw, so he must have been screaming at some point. “What are you doing?” he asked Soma, because who else could have lit the candle?

The prince was sitting in the bed, one hand holding the candelabrum, the other pressed against his cheek. “I—Ciel, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Ciel grumbled, wrapping blankets around himself to fight off the chill that had spread through his whole body. His nightgown stuck uncomfortably to his sweaty skin. He bowed his head, letting hair fall into his eyes. “You didn’t have to get the light.”

“I—you—well, you hit me.”

Ciel looked up. “I did?”

“It’s fine!” Soma waved the hand that wasn’t holding the candelabrum. “It doesn’t even hurt; I was just surprised.”

“Sorry.”

Soma looked astonished at the apology, and Ciel bit back his annoyance. He _had_ manners, didn’t he? There was no need to look so surprised, really. He was about to retract his apology when he noticed the odd way Soma was sitting, an arm wrapped around his knees and the other folded against his body as though he were restraining himself. Ciel wondered at the position until he remembered what he’d asked earlier: _Do not touch me._

“Shall we go back to sleep?” he said, even though he wasn’t sure he could, his heart still beating staccato. “I’m all right, now.” Soma was looking at him with uncharacteristic insistence. “What?”

“Ciel,” Soma said in a quiet, out-of-character tone that made Ciel immediately apprehensive. “When that—butler was strangling me, earlier.”

“Claude. What about him?”

“Yes, Claude. For a moment there, I saw something strange in his eyes: they were red, and the pupils were all wrong.” Despite the blankets, Ciel felt so cold that his fingertips were numb, and his mouth too dry to speak. “I thought I must have been seeing things,” Soma continued. “That sort of thing is impossible, right?”

“Right,” Ciel said weakly.

“What’s wrong with _your_ eye, Ciel?”

Ciel stifled the instinctive urge to cover his eye with his hand. It was long past trying to hide anything. He’d gotten so used to not having to hide it since he’d started living at the Trancy estate, that he hadn’t realized the danger he ran from Soma’s unexpected appearance.

“Why are you asking about this only now?” he asked.

“I didn’t—I’d noticed that you weren’t wearing your eye-patch, and that your right eye was a different colour, but I couldn’t see it very well because of your hair and I figured that, you know, it was dead and that was why—But now I can see that there’s a pattern on it. And I’ve seen something like this before, in one of the books that maid, Hannah, gave me to pass the time. It was a book about _demons_.”

Ciel clenched his jaw. Damn Alois—Hannah giving that book to Soma couldn’t be a coincidence, so it must have been another of the thousand ways Alois was trying to slowly wear Ciel out. Well, the harm was done anyway, and if Soma was going to be his ally in this, then it was only fair that he’d know what exactly he was up against. Besides, Ciel was honestly too wrung out to make up a convincing lie.

“Claude is indeed a demon,” he explained matter-of-factly. “He’s contracted to Alois and will serve him until whatever Alois wished for is fulfilled. The other servants are demons too, but from what I could surmise they’re following Claude. It’s a bet as to what they would do if Alois were attacked, but Claude will defend him, even if it’s not an explicit part of their contract. He wouldn’t want his investment to go to waste, after all.”

Soma must not have expected so many details at once, because they rendered him speechless for a moment. Ciel almost thought that he’d distracted him enough from his first line of inquiry, but then Soma said, “How do you know all this? What’s the relation to that mark on your eye?”

Ciel chuckled faintly. Soma’s habitual obnoxiousness made it easy to forget how smart he really was, but of course it had to come into play at the worst possible moment. Ciel should have probably been more anxious at the thought of revealing his deepest secret, but his nightmare had exhausted his mental energy for fear, and all he felt was a dark sort of amusement. To have Soma stumble upon the truth, of all people! What a joke!

“Upon entering a contract, the demon and its human master must bear a mark—a seal—on their bodies. Claude probably wears his on his hand, where it’s hidden at all times by his gloves; Alois’ seal is on his tongue. And mine—” He pointed at his eye and smiled. “—is right here.”

“You—you mean you— _Sebastian?_ ”

“I salute your keen sense of deduction.”

“But _why_?”

“Why, you ask. Well, first, if I hadn’t done it, I would be dead—simple at that. I would have been killed by the lunatics who kept me prisoner. Even if I’d somehow managed to escape my fate, my parents’ enemies wouldn’t have let me live: after I was back there was scarce a day without an attempt on my life. But, of course, I could have chosen to die rather than do something so despicable as to bind myself to a demon.”

“That’s, no, that’s not what I’m thinking. Of course you wanted to—”

“I was weak,” Ciel said, rather harshly—he did _not_ need Soma’s pity or understanding. “I was a sickly, sheltered ten-year old who knew nothing of the real world. But the real world cares not for your innocence; many people go through that particular disillusion. In my case it was rather brutal, but sorely needed. I understood that I could either lay down my life and lose it to those people, or _fight back_ , but that in order to do the latter I would need a power that the pathetic child I was did not possess. This is what Sebastian is providing me with. He—hey, what’s wrong with you?”

Soma had started sniffing, and before Ciel had the time to tell him to stop it had morphed into full-blown crying. 

“What are you crying for?” Ciel exclaimed, alarmed by the reaction. “Will you stop it!”

“It’s just so _sad_ ,” Soma wailed. He made a gripping motion in the air, as if he wanted to reach out and touch Ciel but had stopped himself in time. “You suffered so much, and you were just a child, and now—” He glared at Ciel through his tears. “And you keep talking about it as if everything was all right!”

“I do know at least that there’s no use crying over it. It is what it is. Now stop that noise—you will get one of the demons’ attention if you keep at it.”

That got Soma to shut up, although he kept sniffling and wiping his nose with the back of his hand like a child with a cold.

“I never liked Sebastian,” he murmured furiously, which wrenched a smile out of Ciel.

“That was very perceptive of you,” he said. “There aren’t that many people who don’t fall for his charm. Actually, I think my aunt Frances is the only one I can think of. You should be flattered.”

Instead of looking flattered, Soma looked alarmed all of a sudden. “Agni thought of him as his friend!”

“Well,” said Ciel, who had trouble getting what the issue was, “I don’t know if Sebastian is capable of friendship in the human sense of the word, but he does seem to respect Agni very much, and I can tell you that his respect is hard to earn.”

“I should—”

“Don’t! Don’t tell Agni anything—actually, you have to promise me you won’t breathe a word to anyone on what I just told you.”

“But—”

Ciel leaned forward, planting his hands on the bed right in front of Soma’s feet and looking him into the eye. “ _Promise me_.”

Soma swallowed audibly. “I promise,” he said.

Ciel sat back on his heels and crossed his arms, examining the prince doubtfully. He believed in Soma’s good faith, but the prince was a chatterbox and Ciel wasn’t sure he would be able to keep himself from spilling the secret, especially to Agni. Maybe he would need to ask Sebastian to intervene and make sure the prince got in line—that didn’t sit well with him, but necessity was law. Or maybe Sebastian had disappeared for good, which meant none of it mattered anymore.

“I’m exhausted,” he said, which was true, but also served as a way to put an end to the discussion. He lied down, flopping an arm over his eyes. “Take care of the light, will you.”

A series of rustling sounds indicated that Soma was moving, but then he asked anxiously, “Will you be fine falling asleep again?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Ciel asked in a monotone. 

“Your nightmare—it sounded quite brutal.”

“I warned you, didn’t I?”

“It looked like you were really distressed.”

Ciel lifted his arm off his eyes to shoot Soma a warning look. “It was a nightmare; they aren’t usually pleasant, unless we’re working with very different definitions of the word. And because it wasn’t pleasant, you’ll understand that I don’t want to talk about it.”

Soma was apparently capable of taking a hint, because instead of arguing as he clearly wanted to, he sighed and snuffed the candle out. Darkness settled back inside the room, and Ciel exhaled slowly. He pictured his body sinking into the mattress, trying to trick it into relaxing enough for sleep. He would need all the rest he could get to face Alois the next morning. 

“Good night, Ciel,” Soma whispered.

“Shut up, I’m sleeping.”

Soma made a sound that came suspiciously close to be a laugh, but Ciel decided to ignore him. The anxiety from his dream had mostly dissipated, leaving him weary to the bone. Contrary to what had happened earlier in the night, Soma’s presence seemed to now have a soothing effect on him and his heart beat to a normal, regular pace once again. As he fell asleep, the last image on his mind was of the ruby ring dancing in front of his eyes, gleaming in the candlelight. 

\---

“What am I to do with you, Prince Soma?”

The question was asked by Alois over a breakfast that they’d all barely touched. The marks on Soma’s neck had darkened into bruises over the night, and to see them there sparked a dark anger in Ciel. Knowing that it was exactly what Alois wanted didn’t make it any easier to swallow: Alois had wanted to hurt him by his actions—the thought that it could have been Elizabeth instead horrified him, although Elizabeth would probably have been less easy to capture—and this was simply unacceptable. There must be a way to stop him once and for all.

“You could simply release him,” Ciel said without much conviction.

“And have him lead your army of Phantomhive servants right here? I don’t think so.” 

Alois was playing nervously with his napkin, folding it and unfolding it in a never-ending variety of patterns. It should have been satisfying to see him so agitated, but Ciel was having trouble focusing, distracted as he was by the ring on Alois’ finger. If only he could pinpoint the reason why that ring disturbed him so much, then he felt sure that the unease that had plagued him for days would lift.

“It’s a wonder they haven’t come here already,” he said, trying to clear the fog that blurred his mind. “I’m surprised about that.”

Alois perked up at the topic. “Oh, but they _have_ come, of course,” he said, the opportunity to crush Ciel’s hopes once again seeming to help his black mood. “I swore to them that I’d seen you leave the mansion with your butler. I even gave them a tour of the place, and with a bit of smoke and mirrors from Claude and Hannah, they never even noticed that there was a floor they never had access to. A shame, because they were so worried about you. The little blond one kept sniffing the whole time.”

“What if Soma swore to you not to tell anyone where I am?” 

He was stalling at this point, because he didn’t believe for a second that he could convince Alois to simply let Soma go. He was trying to remember where he’d seen the ring before: not on Alois’ finger, not on Trancy’s when they’d met at the party months ago, but _before_ that. He had dreamed about it, hadn’t he? This very night again, the ring had haunted his nightmare. The ring and the hideous laugh that seemed to pursue him in his sleep.

“I wouldn’t say anything, I swear it on my royal name!” Soma said. 

It was a valiant effort on his part, but even someone who didn’t know him would have been able to see through the lie, and Alois wasn’t fooled.

“You would abandon your dear friend? I have a hard time believing this,” he said, mocking. “I might unable to tell if Ciel cares about you, but it’s obvious that you care very much about him.”

Soma flushed and looked away. This, right now, was exactly why Ciel thought that to wear your heart on your sleeve the way Soma did was madness: it was nothing but an invitation to hurt you.

“No,” Alois said, tapping a thoughtful index against his lips. The movement of his ring was mesmerizing to Ciel. “I must keep you with us until I’m done with Ciel.”

Ciel knocked his fist down on the table. “What is it exactly that you want from me? We’ve been doing this dance for two weeks now and I still don’t understand it. You poison me, but you don’t want to kill me. You capture a random acquaintance of mine. You make me share your meals and play with you as if I were your _friend_. What do you _want_?”

Alois smiled a slow, secret smile and rested his chin on his interwoven fingers. “To find the chink in your armour is what I want, Ciel. To reveal the cracks behind the mask. To see you lose your precious composure. The scared ten-year old that you were and that _they_ marked as theirs, I want him to be mine too.”

Ciel clenched his fist so hard that the skin whitened at the knuckles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, you don’t? Have you forgotten about the mark on your back? The one you were so desperate I didn’t see when we shared a bath.”

Blood roared in Ciel’s ears and he could barely hear his own words. “How do you know?” he asked—but, suddenly, the answer to that question appeared to him clearly, and the horror of that knowledge blinded and deafened him to most of his surroundings. 

Alois pointed at his ring and said, “You’ve seen this before, haven’t you? It’s as I told you the night you tried to escape: you and I have so much more in common than you assumed. We’re almost brothers, in a sense.”

“No,” said Ciel, or thought he said because he couldn’t hear himself anymore. _You’re a good boy._ The ruby ring kept catching his eye and he wished he could make the masked man eat it and choke on it—wished he could turn everything red, red, red, the exact same hue as the stone. _I want them all dead._

“Ciel? What’s wrong? Ciel!”

He’d fallen off his chair and to his knees. Alois was laughing, Soma panicking, and he pressed his hands over his ears to block them. It didn’t keep him from hearing himself, though; he was—talking? yelling? He felt a touch on his shoulder and lashed out in a panic, smacking the hand away. “Don’t touch me!”

Clammy hands on his skin, pawing him as if he were property. He’d escaped them, or so he’d thought—hadn’t they all died that night? His rage and fear and loathing were so thick he was choking on them. He couldn’t breathe. _Can’t breathe, help, someone, anyone_. Something was whistling to his ears, and he felt as though he were freefalling into a black hole, nothing for him to catch himself on, falling forever to meet never-ending darkness. He screamed; he didn’t want to be annihilated! _Let me go, let me_ out. And then, he knew nothing.

When he woke up the pain in his head was such that at first he thought that it was caught in a vice, and he brought a hand to it with a moan. He patted his forehead and his hair for a moment before he managed to convince himself that the dull, persistent ache he felt came solely from within.

“Ciel?” someone shouted in his ear. “Are you awake?”

Ciel opened his eyes, and found his vision field entirely occupied with Soma’s anxious face. He closed his eyes again and groaned. “You’re too close,” he complained.

“Right! Sorry. You can open your eyes, I moved back.” Ciel sighed—opening his eyes didn’t sound very appealing at the moment. “Ciel, please?”

“All right. Quit your whining.”

He was back in his room—how sickening was it that he now instinctively considered it his room?—and was lying down on the bed. He still had his shoes on, and for some reason that fact bothered him immensely. 

“What happened?” he asked, but as soon as he had the memories started filtering in, and he almost wished for unconsciousness again to escape the mortification they caused. 

“You had a—some sort of fit. I don’t know what happened! Alois was saying something about his ring, and—”

“It’s all right,” Ciel said. “I remember now.”

“You scared me.”

Ciel sat up gingerly, his head feeling as if it would come loose from his neck at any moment. “My apologies,” he said. His voice had an annoying raspy quality to it and he tried to clear his throat to get rid of it. “It won’t happen again.”

He was maintaining his eyes fixed on a spot of the bedcover, trying to keep the room around him from spinning out of control, so he couldn’t see Soma’s face, but the prince’s tone teetered on the edge of panic when he asked, “ _What_ happened exactly? What was so important about this ring? You—you kept screaming these things, about people touching you, and—” 

Soma’s voice wobbled, and when Ciel glanced at him he saw that the prince’s eyes were brimming with tears.

“Stop the waterworks,” he said. “Your tears will only go to waste. As for the ring, Alois was only letting me know that he was aware of things that I thought no living person could know.”

“The mark on your back he was talking about?” Soma asked, and then snapped his mouth shut when Ciel whipped his head to give him a dirty look. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry.”

“The ring belonged to the previous Trancy earl. Who I’m certain wasn’t Alois’ father, although he could have been tricked into believing it. Not that I care either way. I knew I’d seen that ring before—” His lungs felt tight, constricted as though a hand was closing upon them, and he gripped the front of his shirt. “—and, ah, Alois has just confirmed that impression. Apparently Trancy was part of the cult that kept me a captive for a month after my parents’ death. But how did he escape—”

“Escape what?”

Ciel looked Soma straight in the eye: his face reflected nothing but earnest worry, the very picture of an innocence untouched by the darkness permeating the world. It was a fragile thing, innocence—destined to be broken.

“Escape Sebastian. The first command I gave him was to kill everyone in the room,” he said, and watched the shock reverberate across Soma’s face. “Trancy was probably absent that day for some reason, not that it has postponed his death by much. But he’s apparently talked to Alois about me when he was still alive, and Alois seems to have become fixated on me during that period of time.”

The thought of the things Trancy might have told Alois threatened to make his mind go blank, so he pushed that worry away from his current concerns. Trancy was dead anyway; there was nothing to do about him. Alois was still alive, and that needed to be remedied. He was long past hoping Alois could be reasoned with or pacified. Ciel wouldn’t put up again with someone else’s obsession with him.

“What should we do?” Soma asked.

“I’m not sure,” Ciel answered honestly. He wanted to lie down again, but if he closed his eyes he was afraid he’d fall asleep and he didn’t want to dream. “I know you don’t like that idea, but I still intend to kill Alois.”

“I—” Soma rolled his lips, looking torn. “I don’t want to kill anyone. But Alois is insane, and he wants to hurt you. _Is_ hurting you. He’s not going to let either of us go, so we don’t—we’re not going to have much of choice. I’ll help you any way I can.”

“All right,” Ciel said, a little surprised by this change of heart. “But what worries me is what Claude and his possum of demons will do once Alois is dead. If we kill Alois, Claude won’t get—what he’s been promised for his service. He might take umbrage at that, and we have no way of fighting him. He could kill both of us in an instant.” He rubbed circles on his temples with the tips of his fingers. “If only I knew where Sebastian was…” 

Either Sebastian was dead, or something was keeping him from answering Ciel’s calls. Although, now that he thought of it, Ciel hadn’t tried to call for the demon since the first night of his captivity. Could the situation have changed since that night? Well, there was no harm in trying again.

“Sebastian!” he called, pressing his fingers under his right eye. “Come now!”

“What—” Soma started, but stopped himself when the window slammed open and a whirlwind rushed into the room. It materialized into Sebastian, who looked unharmed and unhurried, not a black hair out of place on his head.

“Sebastian,” Ciel said imperiously, glaring at the demon from his spot on the bed. “You’re late. No, _late_ doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

Sebastian fell to one knee, bowing with a hand pressed over his heart. “I beg you to accept my apologies, my lord.”

“What happened? Where _were_ you all this time? Why didn’t you answer my calls?”

Sebastian looked up and said, “Which one of those questions would my lord wish me to answer first?”

“Don’t be impertinent. It’s been two weeks! You left me in the hands of this—” In his anger Ciel had started raising his voice, but stopped himself for fear that he might be overheard. He didn’t understand what was going on, but he knew that it was important no one else be aware of Sebastian’s presence. “Never mind. Explain yourself.”

Sebastian’s eyes veered to the left, fixing on Soma, who had gripped the edge of his chair tightly and was looking at Sebastian with a mix of fear and hatred. “Oh, your highness,” Sebastian said, looking unperturbed. “You’re here too.”

“Alois Trancy kidnapped him too, to use him as a hostage against me,” Ciel explained shortly when Soma kept mute. “I’m still waiting for your excuse.”

“Impatient as ever, young master. I’m afraid that my story is quite a long one, though.”

“Start with why you didn’t answer me when I woke up and called for you the night of the party.”

“I was busy fighting Claude, Lord Trancy’s butler.”

Ciel’s eyes narrowed. “You knew he was a demon as soon as he welcomed us, didn’t you.”

“Of course I did. I was a little surprised to meet another demon butler, but who am I to judge?”

“Indeed. You and Claude were fighting, you say?”

“We were, and it was quite the savage fight. I am ashamed to say that I did not have the upper hand in it, especially once Claude’s companions joined in.”

“Is it common?” Ciel asked, curious. “To have demons serve another demon?”

“Well, humans have servants, don’t they? It is a bit more unusual for demons, although not unheard of. Still, it tipped the balance in their favour and put me in a difficult position: I was outnumbered, and—I’m embarrassed to say it—probably out-powered too.”

“Why didn’t they just kill you, then?”

Sebastian smiled the slow smile that meant he found his young master highly entertaining, and that Ciel had a fierce loathing for.

“You’re so cold, young master,” Sebastian said in a mock-chagrined voice. “To hear you it almost sounds as though you don’t care whether I live or die.”

“I care not about your life beyond your service to me,” Ciel said briskly, almost at the same time Soma spoke up, “You should have died, demon!”

Ciel groaned, and Sebastian directed his attention to the prince, an elegant eyebrow lifted in a mild show of surprise. Soma looked appalled at his own boldness, but, to his credits, he didn’t look away. Then Sebastian looked back at Ciel and he tutted. “Really, young master, must you reveal all of my secrets?”

“Your entrance wasn’t exactly inconspicuous,” Ciel retorted sharply. “Go on with your tale.”

“Yes, my lord. You were asking why they didn’t kill me and be done with it: well, I hate to boast, but I am not so easy to kill. They realized after we’d battled for a little while that they couldn’t kill me without serious damage to themselves—you see, the wounds we inflict on each other are much harder to heal from than other wounds. Claude, who seem to be rather smart, decided it was more profitable for both parties to make a deal.”

Ciel furrowed his brow. “What sort of deal?”

“The sort that would prevent us from mutual destruction. Claude assured me that his master’s intention wasn’t to kill you—and, before you berate me for being naïve, I can guarantee you that I would have sensed it if he’d lied to me—so we agreed on playing a game of sorts.”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“You’re so fond of games, you might appreciate this one. Hear the terms: we would cease our fight immediately and he would let me go without harming me further; neither of us would try to kill the other’s master; and I would be allowed to obey one command of yours, but we would otherwise let our masters play it out.”

“Then you have been made a fool, Sebastian,” Ciel said, anger burning hot inside his chest, almost too much for his weakened body, “because I’ve been poisoned with arsenic, and I don’t think Alois did it himself! Or was that part of your deal, too?”

“You do look a little pale,” Sebastian said, his eyebrows drawn together in an expression that anyone else could have mistaken for concern. “A little thinner too.”

“Those two weeks have been hellish!”

Sebastian bowed his head in subservience. “And I’m sorry for it, my lord.” He looked up, eyes sparkling with challenge. “But you have survived hell already, haven’t you? My deal with Claude was only that he would not kill you, and you’re not dead, so we’re still playing within the boundaries of our pre-established rules. I can assure you, my lord, that I would never have accepted this game if I hadn’t been certain that you would win.” And then, cheeky demon that he was, he _smiled_.

Ciel couldn’t help but start laughing at this, a halted, brittle laugh that alarmed Soma. “Ciel, what’s wrong?” he asked, clinging to Ciel’s arm as though to anchor him to reality—Ciel must have sounded on the verge of a mental breakdown, and, to be honest, he didn’t feel that far from it. 

“You demonic beast,” he hiccupped, fighting the throes of hilarity. “You devious, treacherous creature.” He gently entangled himself from Soma and looked at Sebastian, smiling savagely. “Well, I shan’t disappoint you. One command, you said? I hope that my calling for you didn’t count as one.”

“The game would be rigged if it did. Order away, my lord. But choose carefully: you’re only allowed one.”

“I am not a simpleton, Sebastian. I understood the rules when you said them the first time.” He cupped his chin, deep in thoughts. When he was struck by a sudden realization, he turned and glared daggers at Sebastian. “Wait a minute: you mean that I could have called for you all this time?”

“I needed a couple of days to recover from my wounds, but after that, yes—you could have called and I would have come.”

“And I suppose you couldn’t have just come to me and explained that stupid little game of yours?”

Sebastian smirked. “Oh, master. Where would have been the fun in that?”

Ciel held his eyes for a few more seconds, trying to pour all of his displeasure in one look. Then he sighed, too weary to waste precious energy on an argument. “Never mind that—it’s in the past now. We must plan for the future.”

“That’s the spirit, master.”

“Don’t push it. All right: if I ordered you to take Soma and I away from that god-forsaken place, would it count as one command?”

“I think it would, but I must warn you, young master: it was stated that the game would end if you or Lord Trancy died or gave up. Running away from the mansion would count as giving up.”

“But I would come back to put an end to Alois,” Ciel said, frowning.

“This mansion is the board for our game, if you will. If you leave, you’re forfeiting, and nothing will stop Claude from taking Alois and hiding him somewhere you’ll never find him. Don’t get me wrong, my lord: if you give me the order, I will do as I am told, as per our contract, but you need to be aware of what you’re doing. If you leave the mansion, you lose.”

Lose? Now was a word that Ciel hated, and Sebastian knew it damn well. Blasted demon. Ciel felt uncomfortably fragile, both in a mental and physical capacity, and he knew it wouldn’t take long for him to come apart at the seams. But to let Alois get away with everything he’d done—no, Ciel wouldn’t suffer it. He needed to make Alois pay for every minute of pain and humiliation, as well as make sure that he wouldn’t try something similar again on Ciel himself or someone from his circle. 

“Ciel!” Soma pointed a dramatic finger at him. “I know that look on your face, and as your friend I must tell you: don’t do this. We need to leave this mansion for good and not look back.”

“But—”

“No, ‘but’! This is for your own good; you know you can’t hold on like this for much longer. He’ll either kill you, or drive you insane.”

“Soma.” Ciel looked at the prince, and even took his hand for good measure. The action surprised Soma so much that he stopped in his rant. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Soma said, his answer immediate and earnest as if he didn’t need to think about it. 

_This is how you’ll get killed_ , Ciel thought. He said, “Then trust me when I say that I know what I’m doing. Sebastian, here is my order: you will take Soma with you to the Phantomhive estate. He’ll bear a message with him that he’ll give to the rest of my servants: I’m telling them where I am and asking them to attack the mansion at a specific time and date. That way I can coordinate my move on Alois with their assault, and I won’t have to worry about the demons.”

“No, Ciel,” Soma said, clutching Ciel’s sleeve. “I’m staying with you.”

“Don’t be stupid. Do you really want to stay here after you’ve been almost strangled to death?”

“I don’t want to stay here, but I want to leave you alone in this place even less. If you’re being an idiot by refusing to leave, then I’m staying by your side.”

“I don’t _need_ you.”

Soma closed his eyes and waved a hand in refusal. “Nuh-huh. You can say what you want. I’m not one of your servants to be ordered around. I’m staying.”

“I could ask Sebastian to take you by force,” Ciel pointed out.

Soma’s eyes snapped open and he cast a fearful look at Sebastian, who smiled sweetly in return. “Don’t try to scare me away,” he said, although his words were belied by a slight tremor in his voice. “I’m staying and that’s final.”

“Very well,” Ciel said. “You won’t be able to say I didn’t give you an out. Then, Sebastian, you’ll carry the message on your own. That’s an order. But take care not to let any of the servants see you: they wouldn’t understand why you won’t join the fight.”

“Yes, my lord. Any other questions or instructions?”

“Hmm.” Ciel closed his eyes, trying to make his tired mind go through the variables as efficiently as possible. “Do you think Alois knows about this game?”

“I wouldn’t know, master. Whether we would tell our masters or not wasn’t included in the rules.”

“Alois knows you’re alive, at the very least: he once used the present when talking about you. But Claude could have—could Claude lie to him?”

“If their contract said nothing on the matter, then yes, he could.”

“Well, whether he knows or not doesn’t matter much. I’m worried about what Claude will do. You said that as per your rules, he couldn’t kill me, correct? And that you would let us ‘play it out.’ What does that entail, exactly? Could Claude intervene in a fight between Alois and me?”

“This is a bit of a grey area: if he felt that he could protect his master without risking killing you, then I’d say yes, maybe.”

“Damn it. And although I trust that my servants can hold their own against the other demons, I don’t think they’d do well if Claude joined the fray. I can keep him distracted, but not for long. Could _you_ keep him away from me while I deal with Alois?”

Sebastian tilted his head. “Remember the rule, master: I can only obey one of your commands.”

“I’m not giving you an order. I’m merely asking you if you could do it.”

“I could.”

“And _would_ you do it?”

Red swirled in Sebastian’s irises as he smiled, and Ciel held his breath as he waited for the demon’s answer—he’d worded the request in such a way that Sebastian could very well refuse, but Ciel was counting on Sebastian’s investment in him. 

“How devious of you, young master. I might indeed decide to have a little chat with Claude.”

Ciel chuckled at the avoidance. “Excellent. You shall carry your message and then do as you please.”

There was nothing to write in the room, but Sebastian was not one to be caught unprepared: he gave Ciel paper and a pen, and Ciel composed a short, to the point missive that he addressed to Tanaka. He marked it with his signet to prove his identity, and held it out to Sebastian.

“Tonight,” he told his butler. “One way or the other, it will all be over tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian has finally showed up! Hope that the explanation for his absence so far is satisfying.


	7. Chapter 7

Ciel would have liked to act as quickly as possible, but he needed to give his servants time to travel the distance between the Phantomhive and Trancy estates, and that meant he couldn’t do anything before early evening. He used the time on his hands to think over each of the players’ positions.

“In my message I told Tanaka that they should attack at the main entrance,” he said as he outlined his plan to Soma. “They’re not trying to sneak in; they want to draw as much attention to themselves as they can. Claude should be already busy in the kitchen—are you sure you still want to do this?”

Soma nodded resolutely. “Yes. But—flour, are you sure?”

“Bard destroyed our kitchen once that way, so yes, I’m sure. Be careful not to get caught in the explosion, though. So, Claude will be in the kitchen, the rest of the demons at the front—that means Alois and I should be on the other side of the mansion, as far away from everyone else as possible.” He summoned his mental map of the house. “The library, then. Not Alois’ favorite room, but I’ll find a way to draw him in.”

On Soma’s insistence he tried to rest as much as he could, although each of his attempt at sleeping resulted in him waking up not too long after in a cold sweat. He made good use of pretending to sleep in order to avoid Alois, though, so that at the end of the day, when he headed to the library, he knew that the little snake was probably dying for the occasion to torment him further. 

The library was exposed to the sun in such a way that it was the last part of the mansion to receive daylight. As Ciel sat in a chair, waiting for his opponent, he looked wistfully out the window at the beds of bright flowers that were caressed by the last few honey-coloured sunrays. He wasn’t exceedingly fond of the outdoors, but he hadn’t been allowed outside in days and was starting to feel a bit cooped up. 

“Ah, there you are!”

Ciel contained his start, but he was surprised to find Alois here so soon. It was a little early for his plan; he’d have to keep Alois distracted, then. 

“There I am, indeed.”

Alois approached him, hands linked behind his back. “Are you getting over your shock?”

Ciel shrugged listlessly. It would serve his purpose to have Alois think that he’d been shattered by that last reveal, but he couldn’t overplay it either: after two weeks, Alois knew him well enough to expect him to at least put up a front. 

“I’d like to be left alone, if you don’t mind,” he said, hoping it would needle Alois further. 

“Oh, Ciel.” Alois sat on the arm of his chair and wedged one of his arms behind Ciel’s shoulders. Ciel tensed up at the contact, and Alois chuckled. “Poor, brave Ciel. Stern, solemn Ciel. Although that fit of yours this morning was a little bit funny, I have to say. I’ve never seen anyone work themselves into a panic until they passed out from it!”

“Would you please kindly get your arm off me,” Ciel said through gritted teeth. _Not now, it’s too soon, you can’t kill him now._ “I don’t like being touched.”

“Understandable, given what you’ve been through,” Alois said, not moving an inch. “Good old dad told me all about it. He liked to reminisce when he was drunk.”

“You never thought he was your father, did you. Why the charade?”

“Ugh, it was the old fart’s idea. He wanted to show off his kept boy to the world, and it would have looked suspicious if he’d started housing some random boy with no explanation. Fortunately, he had a conveniently kidnapped son to use as a cover story. I wonder what happened to the boy. Maybe he’s been sold to prostitution too—wouldn’t that be ironic?”

Alois was a prostitute, then—well, that explained a lot. Ciel’s loathing of the late Trancy knew no bounds. 

“Is it what your family did to you—they sold you? How much were you worth?”

Alois looked down at him, mouth pressed in a thin line. “It was my uncle. My parents and brother were dead by then. Oh, of course my dear uncle is also dead, now. I asked Claude to kill him, naturally.”

“Naturally,” Ciel said, and meant it without irony.

Alois smiled widely. “You understand me, do you? I always knew you would, if I could get you to mellow a little.”

“Get me to _mellow_? Is that how you call what you’re doing?” Ciel said, disgusted—but Alois didn’t seem to be listening.

“The first time I saw you,” he went on, eyes glazed over from the act of remembering, “oh, how perfect you looked. I’d never seen anyone so small and frail look so arrogant—as if nothing could ever touch you. I would have thought you didn’t know what it was like, being made to feel as though you’re dirt—no, lower than dirt—but Trancy was more than happy to disprove me of that notion. I couldn’t stop wondering how you could still stick your nose up the way you did. The other thing that caught my attention was the man in black following you everywhere, attentive to your every need… I immediately knew I wanted one just like that!”

That answered one thing he’d wondered about: Claude parading as a butler wasn’t entirely a coincidence. Well, they say that imitation is a form of flattery, but Ciel could have done without this particular demonstration. 

“I think kidnapping me was a rather extreme way to show your appreciation,” he said. 

Alois giggled. “I guess so! Well, we’re both extreme people, aren’t we, Ciel? They made us that way.”

It was getting almost too dark inside the library to see each other. “I have a question,” Ciel said. “How did Trancy die?”

In a display of almost perfect timing, an explosion rang out in the distance at that moment. Ciel, who’d had his hand on his knife for a few minutes now, didn’t give Alois the time to react to it before he tried to stab him. Unfortunately the way Alois was sitting pressed against him was making the manoeuver more difficult, and by the time Ciel had twisted on himself to get to him, Alois had seen him coming and jerked away, albeit not fast enough to avoid Ciel’s knife grazing the side of his arm.

“What was that noise?” Alois asked, then hissed in pain, one hand clamped over the wound on his arm. “What are you doing?”

“We’re ending this,” Ciel said, before he jumped off his seat to get another stab at Alois.

He wasn’t a fighter by any means and Alois was quick on his feet, so none of his blows managed to hit. Alois kept scrambling backward until he reached the wall, and he grabbed one of the swords hanging there. Suddenly, Ciel was the one who had to shuffle back hurriedly, dodging the long heavy blade Alois was waving at him. There was no finesse to Alois’ technique; he’d obviously never been trained in sword fighting, and the sword looked like it was a bit too heavy for him to handle gracefully. In consequence, he was hammering it down in wide and easily telegraphed gestures that Ciel could avoid without too much difficulty.

Ciel was getting exhausted too quickly, though—already he felt out of breath, his muscles burning and sweat sticking his hair to his face and running down his back. He looked around the library for a weapon he could grab, but Alois’ wild attacks had led them away from the wall and toward the open space with black-and-white checkered tiles at the center of the room. It looked, ironically, like they were both standing on a chessboard. 

Sounds of a scuffle reached them, and Alois stilled, his eyes shooting to the door. He was holding out his sword in front of him, and, in a split second, Ciel decided he would not be able to reach him with his small knife, and dashed in direction of the rows of bookshelves on his right. Behind them, he knew he would find more weapons if he could get to the back wall.

“Hey!” he heard Alois call out. “If we’re doing this, then you don’t get to run away!”

The sound of his heels clicking on the tiled floor was approaching Ciel’s position, and Ciel ducked behind a bookshelf, taking advantage of the cover to get rid of his own shoes.

“Ciii-el,” Alois sing-songed, although he sounded a bit breathless too. “Are we playing hide-and-seek now?”

On socked feet, Ciel padded quietly to the wall, where he chose a foil he knew he could manipulate without making a fool of himself and tucked his knife under his belt. Alois’ clicking heels were closing in on him, so he slipped behind another bookshelf to hide.

“You wanted to know how Trancy died,” Alois said loudly, as though he weren’t quite sure where Ciel was. Ciel’s heart was hammering inside his chest and drops of sweat pearled on his eyelashes, blurring his vision. His lungs ached and he had to stifle a cough. “I think you would approve, Ciel. I didn’t ask Claude to do it, because it wouldn’t have been as satisfying. He liked his wine, oh yes he did, so I slipped poison into it—the same arsenic I gave you, but in a much bigger dose. He died in his own shit, begging me for help!”

Ciel took a deep breath, tightening his grip on the sword. “Good,” he murmured viciously, and he darted from behind the shelf.

His sword skidded on Alois’ ribs, but he managed to make him lose his balance and topple to the floor. Alois yelped and swung his sword wildly at Ciel, who would have received the blade in the face hadn’t he instinctively raised his arm for protection and caught it with his hand. The blade bit cruelly into his palm and he winced, but didn’t let go. Alois started to tug at his sword, and, when he couldn’t make Ciel release it, kicked hard at Ciel’s ankle. 

Ciel stumbled and fell into the bookshelf at his back. His head hit the massive wooden piece of furniture, and a series of books rained over him, making him lose his grip on his sword. Stunned, he was unable to stop Alois from pulling him down, and he tumbled and crashed on top of the boy. Through all this he hadn’t relaxed his grip on Alois’ blade, even though his blood made it slippery, and both of them now only had one hand free. Ciel used his other hand to draw his knife out, but it was difficult work wriggling his arm between their two bodies. Alois didn’t make it easy for him, hitting him with his fist in the side and trying to shove him off. For a moment they wrestled like this, both of them reduced to huffs and grunts by the fight. Black spots danced in front of Ciel’s eyes and his wounded hand was a bright spot of agony, but Alois’ shirt was soaked with blood and he was obviously weakening too. Ciel managed to get his knife from under him; Alois grabbed his wrist to keep him from stabbing down and Ciel bit him, digging his teeth ferociously into Alois’ fingers until he tasted metal in his mouth.

“Ow!” Alois yelled in indignant pain, and drew back his hand hurriedly. “You’re crazy!”

“Look who’s talking,” Ciel said, and planted his knife into Alois’ shoulder. Alois howled and his fingers detached from the hilt of his weapon. Ciel threw it and the sword clattered on the floor away from them, and then he held his knife against the pale skin of Alois’ throat.

They looked at each other, both of them breathing hard, wet blood making their clothes stick together.

Alois was crying. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” 

Tears leaking from his eyes, snot running from his nose, he started sobbing with his whole body and Ciel could feel him tremble under him. He choked, hiccupped, and whimpered, in a display of passion that was off-putting to watch. Ciel’s lips curled as he shook from a horrible combination of disgust and pity. 

“Yes,” he said. 

“So mean, you’re so mean.” Alois closed his eyes and threw his head back. His next sob sounded closer to laughter, as did the next one, until he was shaking from hysterical mirth. “So stupid. So pointless! You know why I sold my soul? I wanted _you_ , I wanted to make you mine, body and soul. Your perfect poise. Your fire and your ice. Your sharpness. You, you, _you_. Why couldn’t I be you instead? You never let _them_ destroy you.”

Ciel’s heart fluttered wildly like a trapped bird in his ribcage, thundering in his ears. His vision was eaten away by flashes of light and colours, and he felt very close to fainting. He leaned over until his lips were a hair’s breadth from the shell of Alois’ ear. 

“You’re not me, and you can’t have me,” he whispered. “I was never within your reach.”

“We could have been great together,” Alois whispered back in a pathetic whine. “Adults are gross and pitiful. You and I—”

“We’re nothing alike except in the most superficial way.” Ciel smacked his bloody hand over Alois’ mouth, smothering the boy’s instinctive cry. “But I can promise you at least that _he_ won’t get your soul.”

With his knife, he drew a red line across Alois’ throat.

“No!” Claude shouted.

At some point the demon had barged into the library and Ciel could see him rush toward them in his quickly narrowing vision field. He snatched Alois off the floor, jostling Ciel in the process, but it was already too late. Blood gushed from the wound on Alois’ throat and from his mouth, and he was making awful gurgling sounds. His lips moved as if he were trying to say something, his eyes fixed on Claude’s face.

“Don’t try to speak, your highness,” Claude said, pressing one gloved hand over the wound. In seconds the white fabric had turned crimson. 

Alois smiled, and then his eyes rolled back in his head. The choking sounds had ceased. Claude growled and dropped the body on the floor, discarding it like a broken toy.

“Game over,” Ciel said.

The demon’s eyes narrowed. “You little—”

“Now, now, don’t be a sore loser, _Claude_.” Sebastian’s calm, amused voice made Claude turn around, and Ciel could see his butler approach at a leisurely pace.

“You kept me away,” Claude said, cold anger making his words clipped. “I let you carry your master’s message, but our rules specified that you could only answer _one_ command.”

“And I followed our rules to the letter,” Sebastian said. “My master never ordered me to do anything but carry that message.” Claude looked at him intently, as though trying to perceive falseness through some mysterious demonic sense. “Come on now. How much time have you invested in this boy? A few months, no more? This is nothing. You’ll find another one, and the taste of their soul will make you forget you’ve ever coveted Alois Trancy.”

Claude glared at him a little longer, then cast a dirty look at Alois’ body. “I don’t think I’m cut out for this contract business. This is too much work for no guaranteed benefit. Have fun with yours—as for myself, I’ll go back to easy snacks.”

Sebastian shrugged, raising his palms to the sky. “It’s a shame you can’t appreciate the art of cultivating one’s meal, but to each their own.”

Claude made a disgusted sound, before he left without giving any more consideration to Alois or Ciel, as if they were of no importance.

“Your meal, huh?” Ciel said once the other demon was gone. “How degrading.”

“Come on, young master. You’re not usually one to cower in the face of uncomfortable truths.”

“I suppose not.” His hand was still bleeding steadily, and he wrapped it best as he could into the lapel of his jacket, adding more red to his already bloody clothes. “What were you waiting for, by the way?” he asked, a slur to his voice that curtailed the reprimand. “He’d have needed no more than a few seconds to kill me.”

“I would never have let that happen, master.”

Ciel wanted to get up to his feet, but he could do no more than think about it, as though his mind and body had become detached from each other and he had no control over the latter. Even the pain in his hand felt like it belonged to someone else.

“I want to go home,” he said.

“Of course, my lord.”

Sebastian casually stepped over Alois’ body, not even gracing it with a glance, and bent down to pick up Ciel. For the first time in weeks, Ciel allowed himself to relax just a tiny amount and his head lolled against Sebastian’s shoulder, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from straying to Alois’ lifeless corpse.

“He wanted the demon to love him,” he told Sebastian in an almost dreamy tone of voice—nothing truly felt real anymore.

“Did he, now?” Sebastian said airily. “What a silly notion.”

“I know,” Ciel said, closing his eyes to fight off a dizzy spell. He wished he could pass out right now, but part of him couldn’t help clinging stubbornly to consciousness. “This is exactly what I told him.”

Sebastian carried him out of the library, and in the corridor they came across Soma, who rushed at them with cries of dismay. 

“Ciel!” he shouted. “Are you alright? Where does this blood come from? Are you injured? Ciel!”

The prince looked a little singed at the edges, eyebrows mostly gone and strands of hair frizzy from intense heat. _Idiot_ , Ciel thought. _I told him to be careful with the explosion._

“I’m fine,” he mumbled. “This is mostly Alois’ blood.”

Soma’s eyes shot to the entrance of the library. “Is he—”

“Lord Trancy is dead,” Sebastian said, walking at a brisk pace that forced Soma to trot after him. “We only need to find the servants and then we can leave this place behind us.”

Ciel kept wavering in and out of consciousness as Sebastian walked down the corridors. In the entrance hall they were assailed by cries of “Young master!” and “Ciel!” That last part jolted Ciel into opening his eyes, and he saw Elizabeth. Her sky blue dress was splashed with blood and she carried two sharp-looking swords, their stained blades cutting through the air behind her as she ran toward them.

“Oh, Ciel,” she said in a trembling voice. Her blond pigtails were half-undone and hair fell into her wide green eyes. The last time Ciel had seen her look so dishevelled was when they’d been fighting the dead on the sinking Campania. “Oh, you look—”

Thinking of his missing eye-patch, Ciel was careful to keep his right eye closed so she wouldn’t see the seal. “I’ll be all right,” he said, trying to smile even as his face felt numb. “Are you hurt?”

Elizabeth shook her head, tears spilling from her eyes. “No, no, I’m fine. You—we found you. Everything will be all right now.”

Ciel’s servants had crowded at her back, calling for their master and reaching out as if to touch him, although they didn’t actually make contact. They were all there, none of them looking too badly injured: Finny, his clothes torn, shaking with bubbling sobs; Mey-Rin, hair wild and loose, not wearing her glasses so that she had to squint to look at Ciel; Bard, half of his face bloodied, chewing nervously on an unlit cigarette; Snake, his companions coiled around him as though they were trying to form an armor; Tanaka, one step behind the others with his Japanese sword still in his hand, his face betraying nothing. From the corner of his eye Ciel could see that Agni was there too, enjoying a teary reunion with his own master—it looked like Soma’s optimism hadn’t been unwarranted, after all. 

“You have done well,” Ciel told his servants, and they all beamed at him in pride and relief. “Now, I’d very much like to leave this hellish place and go home, if it’s agreeable to everyone.”

“Yes, my lord!”

With this, what little strength he had left failed him and Ciel felt his eyes close against his will. 

“You can rest, my lord,” Sebastian murmured. “I’ll take care of everything.”

Ciel needed no more incentive to let go and surrender to the sirens of unconsciousness. 

\---

Sebastian took the thermometer out of Ciel’s mouth and examined it. “It looks like your temperature is definitely back to normal, my lord. How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” Ciel answered irritably, fiddling with the bandage on his injured hand. 

He was more than ready to feel like a person again. He’d been back from the Trancy mansion for almost four days, but instead of letting him enjoy his return home, his body seemed to have decided that the absence of danger meant that it was time to crash. He’d fallen prey to a terrible fever, and with it had come its share of nightmares and hallucinations. Some of them were of the usual sort, some forced him to relive the fresh memories from his captivity at Alois’ mansion, and some were a mix of past and present, real events and mad fancies all jumbled together. He dreamed of Alois sharing the cage with him, clinging to him so hard that his fingers were burrowing into Ciel’s flesh; he dreamed of Trancy, _sans_ mask and wearing the ghastly robe that he’d seen Alois burn, looming over him; he dreamed of waking up in Alois’ body and realizing that everything he thought he knew about his own life was a fraud. 

He only remembered bits and pieces of his behaviour during that period, but he knew that he’d babbled like a madman, called for help and sobbed, in turns angry and frightened. He remembered clinging to Sebastian’s sleeve and begging him to stay, and then throwing him out of his room and hiding under his quilt like a deranged two-year old. The fever had broken yesterday, and now Ciel felt lucid for the first time in a while and was regretting it dearly.

“You look a little flushed, master,” Sebastian said, a hint of laughter in his voice suggesting that he knew perfectly well where Ciel’s thoughts had gone. “Are you feeling feverish again?”

“You just took my temperature, Sebastian, so what do you think?” Ciel snapped. “I’ve had enough of being bed-ridden, but I feel too exhausted to get up. This is exasperating.”

“If you’re feeling well enough for visitors, then I know that Lady Elizabeth and Prince Soma would be delighted to see you.”

“You mean they’re here?”

“They’ve come back with us from the Trancy mansion, and they’ve been staying here since then, enquiring about your health every day. They were both terribly worried.”

“They didn’t—” Damn it, he could feel that he was blushing again. “You didn’t let them into my room, did you?”

Sebastian smiled. “Don’t worry, my lord. I was the only witness to your delirious state.”

“Good.”

“But I can’t guarantee that they didn’t hear you,” Sebastian said, his smile widening a fraction.

Ciel scowled. “I’m glad this is funny to you. Very well, I shall receive them now. Let them in.”

Sebastian acquiesced and bowed, then left the room. He came back a few minutes later with Elizabeth and Soma in tow. They must have been lectured on not tiring him, because upon entering the room they acted with a restraint that was out-of-character for both of them. Ciel pushed himself into a straighter position, propped against the pillows Sebastian had piled at his back.

“You can come closer,” he said when they lingered uncertainly at the end of his bed. “Please have a seat.”

They sat down, still staring at him as though they were afraid he would vanish at any moment. Elizabeth wore a frilly pink dress and her hair was tied with ribbons of a darker pink hue, a far cry from the bloody and dishevelled vision that had come to rescue him. Soma still had traces of healing burns on his face, but the bruises on his neck had mostly faded.

“Elizabeth,” Ciel said, since no one was talking—and to think that there was normally no way to make those two shut up! “Sebastian tells me that you’ve been staying here for days. Isn’t your family going to be worried? Edward will think I kidnapped you.”

This was the wrong thing to say, and Ciel realized it as soon as the word ‘kidnapped’ had left his mouth. Before he could try to fix his blunder, Elizabeth had started crying. Soma patted her shoulder comfortingly, and she accepted it in an absent-minded way that suggested a familiarity Ciel had never seen them display with each other. While Ciel was lost to fever dreams maybe they’d occupied their days by bonding with each other. The thought of the force they would represent if they teamed up against him was a scary one.

“Elizabeth, I’m sorry,” Ciel said, desperate to make her stop crying. “It was insensitive of me, and I—”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No, no, I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and trying to smile. “I’m being silly. It’s just that, when I heard you’d gone missing _again_ —” She muffled a sob in her hand. “And then you were so sick, and I though maybe…. But you’re back, now, and you’re all right—are _you_ all right?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m on the mend, at the very least, and I’ll be fine eventually.” He smiled, but wasn’t sure it came across as reassuring as he intended. He was terrible at comforting people. “You know I’m stronger than I look.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, so earnestly that it made Ciel blush. “But, to answer your question, I sent word to Mother and Father that I’d be staying until you were better. They were very worried too, you know. Even Edward was, although he never said it in those terms.”

“I bet he didn’t.”

Elizabeth leaned over and reached out to take his hand. The gesture startled Ciel, but he didn’t try to pull out. “Don’t get kidnapped again,” she told him very seriously.

“I’ll do my best,” Ciel said, even as he thought that his best would probably not be enough.

“But if you do, I’ll always come and save you.”

“Th-thank you.” 

Saving him was supposed to be Sebastian’s job, but the latest events had proved that it might not be a bad idea to have other ways of rescue. In any case his thanks made Elizabeth beam at him, and Ciel couldn’t help smiling in return. Over her shoulder he could see Soma, who hadn’t uttered a word so far. The prince looked unusually serious, and that expression made Ciel feel uneasy.

“Elizabeth?” he said. “Would you mind terribly going to the kitchen and getting me something sweet? Sebastian won’t feed me anything but bland chicken broth and I’m sick of it, but Bard won’t refuse you anything.”

“If Sebastian thinks it isn’t good for you, then maybe you should listen to him,” Elizabeth said, her delicate eyebrows knitted together in a frown.

“Please, Lizzie?”

His plea did the job of melting down Elizabeth’s resistance, and she jumped to her feet and left the room in a whirlwind of pink. Ciel looked intently at Soma for a few seconds, then asked, “How are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m fine, really. Glad that this is over, and glad you’re better.”

“What about your burns?”

Soma brought a hand to his face, as if he needed to touch the burns to remember they were there. “They’re superficial, and Agni has been taking good care of me—even better than usual. I think I scared him very badly. It was just as you said, you know: Alois had him thinking that I’d left with you and Sebastian.”

“Well, I’m glad he wasn’t hurt.” Or killed, but Ciel abstained from saying it out loud. “What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing! What makes you think—really, everything is fine.” Soma started laughing in a terribly unnatural way.

“You’re a very bad liar,” Ciel told him. “Is it about this?” he asked, pointing to his eye-patch. “Are you still mulling over what I told you about Sebastian and my contract with him?”

Soma replied nothing, but his pinched mouth and his downcast eyes said it all. 

“If you’re scared Sebastian will hurt you or Agni, then rest assured: he’s a demon on a leash. He wouldn’t hurt anyone unless I asked him to do it.”

Soma clenched his fists. “But what about you?” he blurted out. “I’m not scared of—well, I’m a little scared, but not that much. It’s _you_ that I’m worried about.”

“Sebastian won’t hurt me either—this is part of our contract. I think that contract is the only thing sacred to him.”

“It’s not—” Soma made a frustrated sound. “When that contract comes to an end, is he going—” Soma leaned toward Ciel and ended his sentence in a whisper. “—to take your soul?”

“This is none of your concern.”

“Stop doing this! He’s a demon, you can’t make me believe that he’s serving you without getting anything in return. As your friend, I can’t let that happen. And there are other people who’d—”

Ciel grabbed Soma’s wrist and abruptly pulled him in. Not expecting this, Soma toppled over the bed with a yelp.

“As my _friend_ ,” Ciel hissed, “you will respect my wishes. If you don’t—and I hate to tell you this, I really do—then try to remember what Sebastian is. He may be on a leash, but mess with the contract and he will _come for you_. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Soma was looking at him with an expression that reflected shock and a little fear, and the sight of it made Ciel’s stomach twist uneasily. It passed quickly, though, and Soma eventually nodded.

“I understand,” he said, much more calmly than Ciel would have expected.

“You’re not to tell anyone about this. Do I have your word?”

“I swear on my royal name that I won’t tell anyone.”

“All right.” Ciel released him. “I’m sorry about this.”

Soma smiled as though nothing unseemly had happened. “It’s all right. You have to protect your secrets.” Then, so suddenly that Ciel didn’t have the time to flail, Soma grabbed him for a hug and held him tight for a moment. “Get better, Ciel. I’ll come back to see you soon.”

After Soma had left Elizabeth came back with a piece of carrot cake and she stayed for a little while with Ciel, telling him about everything he’d missed during his captivity. Despite his best efforts Ciel didn’t manage more than a few bites of the cake, and he tired quickly. When she saw him starting to yawn Elizabeth said her goodbyes, leaving with a kiss on his cheek. Ciel dozed off for an undetermined amount of time after her departure, and was awakened by Sebastian entering the room.

“Pardon me, my lord, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Ciel yawned so widely he made his jaw creak. “It’s fine,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

“I wanted to let you know that I have acquired the information you asked for.”

Ciel sat up in his bed, immediately more alert. “Tell me.”

Sebastian closed the door behind him and came to stand at Ciel’s bedside. “The boy you knew as ‘Alois Trancy’ was actually named Jim Macken, and was born on August 12, 1875 in Clearbrook, a small hamlet about ten miles north of Plymouth. His parents and younger brother Lucas died of typhus in April 1888. Alois—or rather, Jim—was taken in by his uncle, who—”

“Sold him to prostitution, I know. He told me. Do you know where Claude and the other demons went?”

“I don’t know, my lord, but I doubt they will trouble us again.”

“If you say so,” Ciel said, picking at a loose thread from his bandage. Outside the window he could see two birds perched on the branch of a tree, squabbling with each other.

“Was it all you wished to know? Did it bring you the closure you sought?”

Ciel wrenched his eyes from the window. “Closure? The only closure I needed was Alois’ death, and I obtained it days ago. I was curious, that’s all.”

Sebastian bowed his head, but not fast enough to cover for his smile. “Of course, master. Would you say Clearbrook is a suitable place for the burial?”

“I can’t think of any preferable option. Better than have him buried next to Trancy, I suppose—not that that the family would allow it anyway. See to the arrangements, Sebastian.”

“Right away.”

“And then make me some tea, will you. Gunpowder tea, if we have any left.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The two birds had flown away in a flurry of feathers, but Ciel could still hear their screeching echo in the distance. It was a wonderfully sunny day, one of those hot late July afternoons he’d almost never been able to enjoy as a child. Maybe he’d ask Sebastian to take him outside after tea. His eyelids fluttered, and he yawned again. Maybe he’d have a nap first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then the Green Witch arc happens, because Ciel can't catch a breath. :) Hope you enjoyed the ending - I had a lot of fun writing this!


End file.
